


;^$^;\•^o•^\>5^^>i^f;>^S.^^"5SSi5:^^^ 



T)no THE Stars 



Ml) MAN biFE IN HgAV€N 



MoCULLAOH 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Chap. Copyright No. 

rM^S 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 

_ ^i4^„ 



STORIES BY ROSE PORTER. 


Charity, Sweet Charity, 




- $r.oo 


Driftings from Mid-Ocean, 


- 


r.oo 


Foundations, - 


- 


I.OO 


Honoria, - - 


- 


1. 00 


In the Mist, - 


- 


I.OO 


A Modern St. Christopher, 


- 


I.OO 


Our Saints, 


- 


I.OO 


A Song and a Sigh, - 


- 


I.OO 


The Story of a Flower, 


- 


I.OO 


Summer Driftwood for the 


Winter Fire 


I.OO 


Uplands and Lowlands, 


- 


I.OO 


The Winter Fire, 


- 


I.OO 


Years that are Told, - 


- 


I.OO 


A. D. F. RANDOLPH 


CO. 



BEYOND THE STARS 



OR 



HUMAN LIFE IN HEAVEN 



REV. ARCHIBALD McCULLAGH, D.D. 



Seventh Edition 




NEW YORK 

THE A. D. F. RANDOLPH COMPANY 

1897 



TWO COPIES DECEIVED 



^ y 



v^<■^'.^ 



^^-^ 



copykight, 1887, by 
Anson D. F. Randolph & Company 

Copyright, 1857, by 
The a. D. F. Randolph Company 



The Library 
OF Cong HESS 

ilASHlNGTOr*^ 



Press of 

E. O. Jenkins' Son 
New York 



rs 



TO THE MEMORY OF 

MY DEARLY BELOVED WIFE, 

WHOSE 

LOVE AND COMPANIONSHIP SWEETENED EXISTENCE 
AND MADE TOIL PLEASANT, 

AND 

WHOSE ENTRANCE UPON THE CELESTIAL LIFE HAS 
INVESTED HEAVEN WITH FRESH CHARMS, 

^J)ijs ilittl^ 33iDoi^ 
IS LOVINGLY INSCRIBED. 



PEEFACE. 



This little book is the child of affliction. 
It lays no claims whatever to learned exegesis 
or literary excellencies. The questions which 
it discusses are the questions which rose be- 
fore the mind of the writer when he stood 
beside the lifeless body of the best friend he 
ever had in this world, and the one whom he 
loved most. Its aim is to focalize the various 
rays of divine truth scattered through the 
Word of God upon the subject of the condi- 
tion of the blessed dead immediately after 
their departure out of this world, for the pur- 
pose of affording light and consolation to 
those whose hearts have been saddened and 
whose homes have been desolated by death. 

The author is neither so presumptuous nor 
so sanguine as to suppose that what he has 
written on this important and intensely in- 
teresting topic will, in every particula]', com- 

(5) 



6 Preface. 

mand the assent or secure the approval of his 
readers. He only hopes that he has said 
nothing contrary to the statements of the 
Word of God and legitimate inferences from 
the same. 

Should the readers of these pages derive 
aught of the peace and comfort from their 
perusal which the writer has experienced in 
their preparation, he will feel amply re- 
warded. 

Brooklyn, June^ 1887. 



PREFACE TO SEVENTH EDITION. 



This little book lias been received with 
remarkable favor. AYlien it first appeared it 
was kindly reviewed and cordially com- 
mended by the press. The multitude of 
letters which the author has received from 
all parts of the land, testifying to the light 
it has shed on perplexing problems, and the 
comfort it has imparted in the saddest ex- 
periences of life, seem to justify the issuing 
of a new edition. Some have been wont to 
keep copies of it on hand for the purpose of 
sending them to the bereaved. 'No change 
has been made in the present edition except 
to add a brief chapter on "Little Children 
in Heaven." 

As sorrow is always present with us, and 
the consolation of God's Word are the same 
for everv acre, this new edition is sent forth 
with the earnest prayer that He who has 
said " Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people," 
may use it to accomplish this end. 

"Worcester, Mass. 



CONTENTS. 



I. — Heaven the Present Home, 
n.— The Spiritual Body, . 
III.— The Locality of Heaven, 
IV.— The Felicity of the Departed 
Saints, .... 

V. — Heavenly Eecognition, 
VI.— Little Children in Heaven, 
YII. — The Employment and Home Life 

OF THE Glorified, . 

VIIIo — The Eelation of Departed 

Saints to this World, . 

IX.— The Eesurrection Body, . 

X. — The Eelation of the Saints to 

THE General Judgment, 
XL— -The Grand Consummation, 



PAGE 
9 

21 

27 

33 

39 
50 

58 

70 
80 

96 
107 



BEYOND THE STARS. 



HEAVEN THE PRESENT HOME. 

It is a moment of great sotemnity when 
we sit by tlie side of a beloved one and 
watch, with aching heart, hfe gradually ebb- 
ing — ^the eye growing dimmer, the pnlse 
feebler, the fatal pallor more visible, until 
death gains the mastery and the body sinks 
into that stillness and repose that knows no 
waking. What becomes of the soul imme- 
diately after death ? Whither has it gone ? 
Into what new scenes has it been ushered ? 
What is the character of that life which it is 
now living apart from the body? These 
questions are not a matter of cold speculation 
or indifference to those whose hearts have 
been riven, and the light of whose homes 

has been extinguished by the hand of death. 

(9; 



10 Beyond the Stars. 

Who, in the hour of bereavement, as he hung 
over the precious form of the departed, 
kissed the unresponsive lips' and smoothed 
the cold, unconscious brow, has not asked 
himself whither has the spirit of his beloved 
gone. How anxiously does the widowed 
heart, whose deepest yearnings are for 

"The touch of a vanished hand, 
And the sound of a voice that is still," 

crave some light on this point. 

The Word of God throws more light on 
this interesting and important subject than 
T\e are wont to suppose, until our thoughts 
are specially directed to it. No doubt its 
disclosures are meagre in comparison with 
what we would like to know; meagre in 
comparison with what we shall know when 
we ourselves cross time's boundary line and 
see the unseen world as it is. Let us take 
the Word of God as our lamp, to guide us as 
we attempt to follow the spirit to its new 
realm of being. 

When our Lord, on the eternally memo- 



Heaven the Present Home. 11 

rable night preceding His crucifixion, stood 
consciously under the cope of death. He said 
to His disciples, "Let not your heart be 
troubled. I go to prepare a place for you. 
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I 
will come again and receive you unto myself, 
that where I am, there may ye be also." 
A little later, on the same night. He said, 
"Father, I will that they also whom Thou 
hast given me be with me where I am, that 
they may behold my glory which Thou hast 
given me." The next day, as He hung upon 
the Cross, His reply to the prayer of the 
penitent thief, that He would remember him 
when he came into His kingdom, was, 
" Yerily, I say unto thee, To-day shalt thou 
be with me in Paradise." Paul, in writing 
from Eome to the Philippians, assured them 
that he desired "to depart and be with 
Christ." These passages teach with unmis- 
takable clearness three things. The first is 
that heaven is a place^ a place of dbode^ dis- 
tinct from all other places as , truly as is the 
earth we now inhabit. If it be not a bounded 



12 Beyond the Stars. 

place of abode, then these passages, and many 
other declarations of Scripture, have no 
meaning, and the apocalyptic vision of John 
on Patmos is an idle phantasm. Heaven is 
described in the Word of God as a glorious 
city. To the inspired vision of John this 
glorious city was surrounded by lofty v^alls 
of the most precious stones, which were 
pierced by gates of pearl; the streets of it 
were covered with a pellucid pavement of 
gold. No sun shone in or upon it. It 
needed no luminary such as supplies light 
and life to this planet, because it was illumi- 
nated by the visible presence and glory of 
God, and shone itself with a brilliancy and 
splendor that surpassed all created suns. 

It is not claimed that the Bible pictures of 
heaven are literal, complete, and exhaustive. 
There are many scenes on this earth of such 
surpassing grandeur, sublimity, and beauty, 
that no words can adequately describe them, 
no photographic art can faithfully portray 
them, no artist's brush can transfer them to 
canvas. Of such scenes we say that they 



Heaven the Present Home. 13 

must be seen to be appreciated. If this be 
true of some things upon the earth, how 
much more true is it of heaven itself. 

What is claimed is that the Bible sets forth 
heaven as a definite, tangible place of abode. 
It records two instances of men having been 
carried up bodily into heaven without dying. 
"By faith Enoch was translated that he 
should not see death ; and he was not found, 
because God had translated him." Elijah, in 
the sight of his pupil and successor, " went 
up by a whirlwind into heaven.'' 

When the Bible depicts heaven as a city 
of surpassing magnificence and loveliness, 
with many mansions and a central throne, 
and lighted by the glory of Him who sits 
upon that throne, it is reasonable to suppose 
that inspiration has employed the most ap- 
propriate symbols to convey to our minds 
some idea of that place, and that there is 
some resemblance between the descriptions 
and the thing described. 

The second thing is that heaven is not 
only a locality, a glorious place of abode, but 



li Beyond the Stars. 

it is the place to which Jesus went after His 
resurrection, and where He now lives and 
reigns. The body of Jesus, subsequent to 
His resurrection, was not bound by the mate- 
rial laws to which its actions were generally 
conformed previous to His death. During 
the forty days which intervened between His 
resurrection and His final ascension. He was 
wont suddenly to manifest Himself to His 
friends and followers, no one knew from 
whence, and as suddenly vanish, no one 
knew whither. He stood in the midst of the 
disciples " when the doors were shut for fear 
of the Jews." He suddenly became invis- 
ible — vanished from the sight of two of His 
disciples while they sat talking with Him in 
a house in the village of Emmaus. Yet, 
notwithstanding the fact that His body was 
transformed from an earthly to a heavenly 
organism, it was still a real body. To the 
" terrified and affrighted " disciples, who sup- 
posed when they saw Him suddenly come 
out of the unseen " that they beheld a spirit," 
He said, " "Why are ye troubled ? and where* 



Hecwen the Present Ilome. 15 

foie do reasonings arise in your heart? See 
my hands and my feet, that it is I myself ; 
handle me and see ; for a spirit hath not flesh 
and bones as ye behold me having." And at 
last, " while they beheld Him, He was taken 
up and a cloud received Him out of their 
sight." It was while, with uphfted hands, 
He was engaged in the act of blessing them, 
that His feet ceased to touch the mount, and 
they saw Him ascend up and up and up until 
a cloud intervened between Him and them, 
and He passed beyond the reach of their 
sight. As they stood in astonishment, gazing 
at the place where He had disappeared, ' 
"behold, two men stood by them in white 
apparel." These men, addressing them, said, 
" Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up 
into heaven ? This same Jesus which is taken 
from you into heaven shall so come in like 
manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven." 
The third thing is that the souls of be- 
lievers immediately pass into heaven, where 
they are with Jesus. "Yerily, I say unto 
thee. To-day shalt thou be with me in Para* 



16 Beyond the Stars. 

dise." As this promise was uttered in tlie 
afternoon, it meant that before the sun then 
westering had sunk below the horizon, this 
ransomed soul would be with Jesus in heaven. 
Even when we think of heaven as a definite 
place of abode, we are accustomed to think 
of it as an immeasurable distance from the 
earth. But however widely it may be sepa- 
rated from us in space, it is clearly taught in 
the Scriptures that the intercourse between 
heaven and earth is constant and uninter- 
rupted. Milton has said : 

*^ Millions of spiritual beings walk the earth, 
Both when we wake and when we sleep." 

It would only require a slight change ii. 
the organ of sight for new and startling 
wonders to burst upon our vision. Suppose 
the human eye possessed the combined 
powers of the telescope, the microscope, and 
the spectroscope — ^possessed a range of vision 
so vast and penetrating that it could discern 
objects on the surface of distant planets, yet 
fio minute that it could see things now in vis 



Heaven the Present Home. 17 

ible, and so piercing that it conld look 
through objects now opaque and see their 
constituent elements, would not material 
creation assume a new aspect of wonder and 
beauty ? A change in our present powers oi 
vision, or the gift of a new sense, might show 
/IS that we are encompassed on every side by 
spiritual beings. When an army of Syrians 
encompassed the city of Dothan for the pur- 
pose of apprehending Elisha, the sight of 
this army paralyzed his attendant with fear. 
'' Fear not," said the prophet, " for they that 
be with us are more than they that be with 
them." Then EHsha prayed that the Lord 
would open the eyes of his attendant. " And 
the Lord opened the eyes of the young man 
and he saw ; and behold, the mountain was 
full of horses and chariots of fire round about 
Elisha." 

It is no mere speculation or soothing fancy 
to say that angels surround the couch of the 
dying saint to conduct bis liberated spirit to 
its celestial home. It is a revealed truth. In 
the parable of the rich man and I^azarus, our 
2 



18 Beyond the Stars. 

Lord says that when Lazarus died he was 
carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom. 
'^Abraham's bosom" is a metaphorical ex- 
pression equivalent to paradise or heaven. 
With reverent imagination we can see this 
band of holy ones convey the ransomed soul 
through interstellar spaces more swiftly than 
light travels — though it shoots through space 
at the rate of nearly eleven millions of miles 
per minute — yea, with almost the velocity of 
thought, until they reach the pearly gates of 
the celestial city, whose glory gleams afar. 
While friends, with hearts that ache with an 
intolerable sense of want, an unspeakable 
dreariness and loneliness, and with eyes 
dimmed with weeping, bend over the body 
scarcely cold in the embrace of death, tho 
soul, amid the hallelujahs of angelic and re- 
deemed intelligences, enters heaven, and is 
conducted into the presence of Jesus, to be 
personally welcomed by Him. Just before 
the martyr Stephen fell, he "looked up 
steadfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of 
God, and Jesus standing on the light hand 



Heaven tlie Present Home. 19 

of God." Wliile his enemies stoned liim, lie 
called "upon the Lord, saying, Lord Jesus, 
receive my spirit," — and then immediately 
passed into the very heaven he saw opened, 
and into the presence of Jesus, whom he saw 
standing on the right hand of God. O, what 
a moment of unutterable rapture that must 
be for the redeemed one, as he passes through 
heaven's portals, and gazes for the first time 
upon its ineffable scenes and unreportable 
glories! What ecstatic joy must, thrill his 
being as he realizes that he is in heaven^ 
saved and eternally safe, and that it is to be 
his home forever. Perhaps he may cry out : 

" And is this heaven ? and am T here ? 

How short the road ! how swift the flight ! 
I am all life, all eye, all ear ; 
Jesus is here, my soul's delight. 

"Is this the heavenly Friend who hung 
In blood and anguish on the tree ? 
Whom Paul proclaimed whom David sung, 
Who died for them, who died for me ? '' 

Then the soul, at death, does not, as some 
would have us believe, sink into a state of 



20 Beyond the Stars. 

anconsciousness until tlie resurrection If 
such were the case, it would be impossible to 
conceive of Paul saying that for him to die 
\vas gain. "Why did he desire to leave this 
pv^orld ? That he might sink into a state of 
nnconsciousness ? Nay. He desired to de- 
part in order that he might be locally and 
visibly with Christ. 

Nor does the soul at death pass into a place 
midway between earth and heaven — a place 
more exalted and grander than earth, yet 
lower and less glorious than heaven — until 
the resurrection. It passes immediately into 
heaven, that place of abode where God per- 
manently manifests the splendors of His 
uncreated glories, and where Jesus dwells in 
His glorified human nature. Life in this 
Ivorld is separation from the Lord. " While 
we are present in the body we are absent 
from the Lord : for we walk by faith, not by 
light; we are willing rather to be absent 
from the body and be at home with the 
Lord." 



n. 

THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 

Does the human spirit at death pass into 
the unseen world naked and disembodied? 
There are men of profound and exact scholar- 
ship who, in the name of science and the 
Scriptures, on the combined authority of 
God's twofold revelation as given in nature 
and the written word, affirm that the soul 
possesses a non-atomic, ethereal enswathe- 
ment — a spiritual body within this material 
body, whose complex relation with it is 
simply dissolved by death. This invisible 
spiritual body which enswathes the soul, and 
through which the soul shines as the glory of 
Christ's Divinity gleamed and flashed through 
the veil of His humanity on the Mount of 
Transfiguration, is the immortal vesture with 
which the soul passes into the eternal world. 
Joseph Cook, in his work on Biology, devotes 



22 Beyond the Stars. 

a lecture to the discussion of the fact of a 
spiritual body in the light of the latest re- 
searches of a reverent science. Let me give 
an illustration from it, vrhich shows the con- 
clusion which he reaches. I use very largely 
his own words. 

Suppose we take a human body, and sepa- 
rate it into its component parts of bones, 
muscles, arteries, and nerves. Were these 
four parts separated and held up in their nat- 
ural condition, they would each have a human 
form. But behind the nerves there are bio- 
plasts. Bioplasm means that germinal sub- 
stance which has the power of transmuting 
non-living into living matter, and of move- 
ment and of self-multiphcation. It is that 
power which builds the bviXies, braids the 
muscles, constructs the arteries and veins, and 
weaves the nerves. If we could take out these 
bioplasts which weave the nerves, and hold 
them up by the side of the nerves, all .n 
their natural position, they would have a 
human form. And which of these forms is 
the man ? Your muscles are more important 



Tlie Spiritual Body. 23 

than your bones; your arteries than yoar 
muscles; your nerves than your arteries; 
and your bioplasts than your nerves. But 
you do not reach the last analysis here ; for 
if you unravel a man completely, there is 
something behind the bioplasts. There are 
many things we cannot see that we know. 
We know that there is in our bodies a ner- 
vous influence that plays up and down our 
nerves Hke electricity on the telegraph wii^e. 
We have never seen it, but we have felt it. 
Suppose we could take that out. Suppose 
we have here a man made up of nerves, and 
here a man made up of bioplasts, and here a 
man made up of nervous influence, separated 
entirely from flesh. The man of nervous 
force would be more ethereal than either the 
man of nerves or the man of bioplasts — so 
ethereal as to be invisible and intangible to 
men in their present state. But would not 
this be a man very much more than either of 
the other two ? What if death thus dissolves 
the innermost from the outermost? We 
absolutely know that nervous influence is 



24 Beyond the Stars. 

there. We know also that there is something 
behind the action of these bioplasts. If we 
CO aid take this something, which is still finer 
than what we call nervous inllnence, and 
could hold it up here, it would be coincident 
everywhere with the mysterious human phys- 
ical outline. Would it not be ethereal enough 
to go into heaven ? When the Bible speaks 
of a spiritual body, it implies that the soul 
has a glorified enswathement which will ac- 
company it in the next world. " I believe," 
adds Mr. Cook, " that it is a distinct biblical 
doctrine that there is a spiritual as there is a 
natural body, and that the former has extra- 
ordinary powers. It is a body which appar- 
ently makes nothing of passing through 
what we call ordinary matter. The great 
proposition I wish to emphasize is, that 
science, in the name of the microscope and 
scalpel, begins to whisper what revelation 
ages ago uttered in thunders, that there is a 
spiritual body with glorious capacities. The 
self-evident axiom that every change must 
have an adequate cause, requires us to hold 



Tlie SpirititaL Body. 25 

that there exists behind the nerves a non^ 
atomic ethereal enswatliement for the soul, 
which death dissolves out from all complex 
contact with mere flesh, and which death, 
thus unfettering without disembodying 
leaves free before God for all the develop 
ment with which God can inspire it." 

Paul says, not that there will be, but that 
there are, spiritual bodies. ''If," he says, 
"there is a natural body, there is also a 
spiritual body." And who will say that the 
glorified body in which Moses appeared on 
the Mount of Transfiguration, a body not 
subject to the laws of time and space, but 
capable of coming out of the unseen and 
vanishing into it again, is not the character 
of the body worn by the redeemed in the 
interval between their departure out of tliis 
world and the resurrection? If our lov(d 
ones, for whom to live was Christ, were in 
the very article of death made perfect in 
holiness, and in spiritual bodies passed imme- 
diately into heaven, has death for them not 
been immense gain ? 



26 Bjyond the Stars. 

It is strictly true that 

'* It is not death to die, 

To leave this weary road, 
And 'mid the brotherhood on high. 
To be at home with God. 

'* It is not death to close 

The eye long dimmed by tears, 
And wake in glorious repose, 
To spend eternal years. 

"It is not death to fling 
Aside this sinful dust. 
And rise on strong exulting wing 
To live among the just. 

" Jesus, Thou Prince of life, 
Thy chosen cannot die. 
Like Thee, they conquer in the strife, 
To reign with Thee on high." 



in. 

THE LOCALITY OF HEAVEN. 

We have seen that heaven is a definite 
place in some part of the universe. Is it pos- 
sible to determine its locality ? The dej)ths 
'of space beyond the surface of the earth are 
designated in the Scriptures by the term 
heavens. These heavens are spoken of as 
divided into three vast regions. The first 
heaven is the region of the atmosphere where 
the clouds are formed, the wind blows, and the 
birds fly. The second heaven is that immeas- 
urable expanse in which the sun, moon, 
and the countless stars move and shine. The 
third heaven, or " heaven of heavens,'' is the 
place where God specially and permanently 
manifests His glory, and where the angels 
and the saints who have gone from this 
world dwell. The Bible, in speaking of this 

heaven of heavens, always speaks of it as. 

(27) 



28 Beyond the Stars. 

above the earth. When the great forerunner 
of Christ stood on the banks of the Jordan, 
he said : " I saw the Spirit descending from 
heaven like a dove." To Nicodemue, Christ 
himself said: ^^ISTo maD hath ascended up 
to heaven but He that came down from 
heaven." Paul tells us that on one occasion 
he was " caught up to the third heaven and 
heard unspeakable words which it is not law- 
ful for a man to utter." John, in describ- 
ing the vision which he received of heaven 
in Patmos, says : " I looked, and behold, a 
door was opened in heaven ; and the first 
voice which I heard was as it were of a 
trumpet talking with me, which said. Come 
up hitlierP As the Bible speaks in popular 
language, the idea which it designs to convey 
by representing heaven as above the earth, 
is that it is a place more glorious and exalted 
than the earth. 

This is all the light it throws upon its lo- 
cality. 

But has anything been discovered in 
nature, that other volume of Jehovah's 



Tlce Locality of Heaven, 29 

revelation, wliicli throws any light on this 
interesting point ? Since Newton discovered 
that mystic key that unlocks so many of the 
secrets of the stellar heavens, astronomers 
have assiduously songlit to find the centre of 
universal motion. Nor have their labors 
been altogether in vain. Madler, of Dorpat, 
after a series of the most elaborate observa- 
tions and ingenious calculations extending 
through years, " reached the conclusion that 
Alcyone, the principal star in the group of 
the Pleiades, now occupies the centre of 
gravity, and is at present the sun about which 
the universe of stars composing our astral 
system are revolving." Some conception may 
be formed of the enormous distance which 
separates us from this central sun if we re- 
flect that it takes light travelling at the rate 
of twelve millions of miles a minute five 
hundred and thirty-seven years to make the 
journey. It takes our sun eighteen million 
two hundred thousand years to make one 
revolution around this central luminary! 
What a lofty significance do these facts im- 



30 Beyond the Stars. 

part to the question Jehovah put to Job: 
''Canst thou bind the sweet influences of 
Pleiades?" Canst thou arrest that attract- 
ive influence which it wields over the sun 
and its attendant worlds by which it sends 
them careering with bewildering v^elocity, 
yet without the slightest jar or discord, in an 
orbit of such immensely vast dimensions? 
If Madler's conclusion does not rest on the 
most absolute proof, yet it is claimed for it 
that " it is as much like the truth as most 
photographs are like the persons who sit foi 
their pictures in the sun." 

Just as Alcyone is the centre around which 
our sun, with his lordly retinue of planets and 
satellites, moves with majestic sweep, it is rea- 
sonable to conjecture that there is hid away 
in the infinite depths of space a gravity cen- 
tre of the whole material universe — a sun of 
suns, around which all suns and systems re- 
volve in their vast and almost eternal orbits. 
" It is true we have no certain knowledge of 
such a centre, but analogy points to it ; and 
if the world were to continiae long enough 



The Locality of Heaven. 31 

to accumulate, in future millenniums, accurate 
series of observations of the motion of the 
whole heavens, we might even hope to calcu- 
late the direction and distance of the phys- 
ical heaven of heavens ; and perhaps instru- 
ments might be constructed to catch some 
rays of its light for mortal eyes. Such an- 
ticipations may never be realized, and we 
must for the present be content to know that 
science and revelation, standing on the ex- 
treme verge of their respective fields, both 
point to a mysterious centre of the universe 
of God, whence emanate powers that extend 
to the utmost limits of space, and where 
dwells glory inaccessible, which eye hath not 
seen, neither hath it entered into the heart 
of man to conceive." ^ 

" At the centre of this august totahty of 
revolving orbs and firmaments, at once the 
centre of motion and the centre of govern- 
ment to all, is that better country, even the 



* '* Nature and the Bible," by Sir J. W. Daw- 
son, p. 71. 



32 Beyond the Stars. 

heavenly, wliere reigns in glory everlasting 
the Supreme Father and Emperor of JN"atnre5 
the capital of creation ; the one spot that has 
no motion, but basks in majestic and perfect 
repose while beholding the whole ponderous 
materialism which it ballasts in course of cir- 
culation about it." ^ It is safe for us to 
accept this conjecture in regard to the locality 
of heaven as true, until we ourselves by God's 
grace reach that glorious place and in the 
Ught of its disclosures learn the truth with 
certainty. 

* '' Ecce Coelum," by E. F. Burr, D.D., page 150. 



IV. 

THE FELICITY OF THE DEPARTED 
SAINTS. 

The believer in his passage out of this 
world experiences two great changes. He is 
freed from a gross material body and has a 
body exquisitely attuned to the movements 
and faculties of the soul. He is also abso- 
lutely delivered from sin, both as an indwell- 
ing principle and as an opposing force. 

The negative features of the state upon 
which he enters beyond death are very fully 
Bet forth in the Scriptures. There will be 
an absence of all those things which shadow, 
corrode, and destroy happiness in this life. 

One of the most familiar spectacles in 

this world is poverty. There are millions — 

some of them the blood-bought sons and 

daughters of God — for whom life means a 

desperate struggle for the scanty necessities 

of existence. But in heaven there will be 
3 (33) 



34 Beyond tne Stars. 

no poverty. " They sliall hunger no more^ 
neither thirst any more " — " For the Lamb 
which is in the midst of the throne shall feed 
them, and shall lead them nnto living foun- 
tains of waters." 

There will be no pain in heaven. No 
matter in what direction we turn our eyes, 
we see human beings hampered by bodily 
infirmities, or dragging out a miserable ex- 
istence in the midst of physical sufferings. 
The life of the redeemed on the other side 
of the grave is unassailed and unassailable by 
disease and infirmity. No consuming fevers^ 
no wasting consumption, no palsied limbs ^ 
no sightless eyes, no mute tongues are found 
in heaven. 

There are moral pains as well as those 
physical diseases which turn existence into 
misery and make every nerve a source of 
anguish. In this world we have to perform 
p linful duties, to submit to painful associa- 
tions, and to experience painful partings. 
There is no pain and nothing painful in 
heaven. 



The Felicity of the Departed Saints. 35 

This world, with all its beauty and all its 
joy, is full of sorrow. There is no moment 
of time when some hearts are not aching with 
secret griefs, or breaking with nameless woes, 
as well as with sorrows which cannot be hid 
from the public eye. Is it not a heart-rending 
scene to see a group of httle children, just at 
that age when they specially need a mother's 
watchful care, gather round her lifeless form 
to imprint their last kiss upon her motionless 
jips ? Death is a terrible, relentless, inexora- 
ble foe, who ruthlessly severs the closest and 
. tenderest ties of nature without explanation 
and without apology. On what household 
has not his blighting shadow fallen ? Wliat 
heart has he not touched and saddened ? But 
there is a world where ''there shall be no 
more death; neither sorrow nor crying; 
neither shall there be any more pain ; for the 
former things are passed away." Twice it is 
aflSrmed in the closing chapter of the Apoca- 
lypse that " there shall be no night in heaven." 
In this world night, which by its darkness 
and silence favors a constantly-recurring pe- 



36 Beyond the Stars. 

riod of repose, is as necessary to us as the day. 
Rest — sleep — 

** Sleep, that knits up the ravelled sleeve of 
care, 
The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath, 
Balm of hurt minds, great Nature's second 

course, 
Chief nourisher in life's feast," 

is indispensable to man. The fact that " there 
shall be no night " in heaven suggests that the 
redeemed, on entering it, are clothed with an 
amazing increase of power, since they need 
no season of repose. But '^ night '' is used in 
the Scriptures in a metaphorical sense for ig- 
norance and error. Therefore, we may in- 
terpret the absence of night as meaning that 
there shall be no intellectual and spiritual 
darkness in heaven. 

" Blessed are the pure in heart, for they 
shall see God." 

" Here our views are limited ; and we see 
only the skirts of His glory ; there the reve- 
lation will be as ample as our finite faculties 
will permit What saints already know will 



The Felicity of the Dejyarted Saints. 37 

shine with new light, and present itself to 
their minds with an evidence and satisfaction 
which they never formerly experienced ; mys- 
teries will be explained, difficulties will be 
solved, and excellencies will rise to view in 
the Divine nature, of which no vestige was 
discoverable in His works. How glorious 
will He appear when every veil is removed, 
and He is contemplated in the fullness of 
His attributes ! The sight will be transport- 
ing, and will excite the highest admiration 
and joy.'' * 

In view of that new and infinitely more 
glorious mode of existence that awaits the be- 
liever the moment he passes out of this world, 
is it not true that death is immeasurable 
gain ? " Blessed are the dead who die in the 
Lord." Dead ! 

" There is no death — what seems so is transition ; 
This life of mortal breath 
Is but a suburb of life elysian, 
Whose portal we call death." 

The departed saints are living a far higher. 



*Dr. John Dick. 



88 Beyond the Stars. 

grander, and nobler life than we are. "To 
him tliat overcometh will I grant to sit with 
me in my throne, even as I also overcame 
and am set down with my Father in His 
throne." They have overcome, and have en- 
tered upon a career of sinless, griefless, pain- 
less, deathless activity, in which they are per- 
fectly happy up to the measure of their 
capacities. 

** We speak of the realms of the blest, 
Of that country so bright and so fair, 
And oft are its glories confessed — 
But what must it be fo he there f 

•* We speak of its pathways of gold, 

Of its walks decked with jewels so rare, 
Of its wonders and pleasures untold — 
Bat what must it be to be there J " 



V. 

HEAVENLY RECOGNITION. 

A_RE the tender relationohips and holy fel- 
lowships of this world, which have been sev- 
ered by death, ever to be reunited ? Shall we 
know and love in heaven those whom we 
have known and loved on earth ? As there 
are few who have not reluctantly surrendered 
loved ones into the hands of death, the re- 
newal of whose companionship they crave, 
this topic is one of thrilling interest to us all. 
Before adducing the direct testimony of God's 
Word on this important topic, glance for a 
moment at two strong presumptive argu- 
ments. The first is, that a behef in future 
recognition is a matter of almost universal 
expectation. On this point, nearly all man- 
kind — Greeks and Romans, Jews and Gen- 
tiles, Christians and heathens — are agreed. 

God ne^er mocks His creatures. The fact 

(39) 



iO Beyond the Stars. 

tnat He lias implanted an instinct, appetite, 
or desire in our nature shows that He has 
made provision for its legitimate gratification 
— as certainly as that He made the eye 
for light and the lungs for air. But, if we 
are not to know our earthly friends after we 
part with them here, then God, contrary to 
His known character, has implanted deeply 
in our natures a universal expectation which 
is doomed to disappointment. The conse- 
quences which flow from a denial of this doc- 
trine are appalling. If there is no mutual 
recognition of friends in heaven, then the 
death of our loved ones is, for us, equivalent 
to their annihilation ; for if they continue to 
live, and we do not know them, it is the same 
to us as if they did not exist at all. Is not 
this a thought from which we shrink with 
horror ? 

The second argument is the immortality of 
memory. There are few facts more clearly 
established in mental science than that what- 
ever is once stamped upon the memory is 
never forgotten. Ten thousand things which 



Heavenly liecogmtion. 41 

have been said and done and known, may pass 
from recollection without being obliterated 
from the memory. The tablet of the human 
memory is God's book of remembrance, on 
which is written the record of each man's life. 
Alany trustworthy instances might be cited of 
memory, when men were suddenly brought 
face to face with death, marshalling all the 
ovents of a lifetime before the mind in the 
twinkling of an eye. It only requires some 
extraordinary incident to occur in the experi- 
ence of any man to cause his memory to re- 
call all the forgotten secrets of his life, and 
hold them up before his mind. It is clearly 
taught in the Bible that memory, which is 
the foundation of all the intellectual faculties, 
accompanies us into the eternal world. In- 
deed, its perpetuity is essential to our identi- 
ty. Christ did not come into this world to 
change the mental and moral faculties of man, 
but to purify them, exalt them, and fix them 
on God. The redemption song which the 
saved io glory sing involves the continuance 
of memory; it implies that they remember 



12 Beyond the Stars. 

iheir experience here, and the sins from 
which they have been washed. If they re- 
member their experiences here, will they not 
also remember those with whom their lives 
were most intimately intertwined ? 

Look at some of the testimonies of Scrip- 
ture on this point. Take the case of David. 
"When his child was smitten with a severe ill- 
ness, David prostrated himself upon the 
ground, and fasted and prayed, in the hope 
that God would arrest the disease and spare 
the child's life. But when he learned that 
the child was dead, to the astonishment of 
his servants he rose from the ground, washed 
himself, went to the house of the Lord and 
worshipped, and then partook of some re- 
freshments. The explanation which he gave 
of his conduct was this: "While the child 
was yet alive, I fasted and wept ; for I said. 
Who can tell whether God will be gracious 
to me that the child may live? But now 
that he is dead .... I shall go to him ; but 
he shall not return to me." This incident 
shows two things — that David confidently ex- 



Heavenly Eecog/iition. 43 

pected to see his child after death, and as 
confidently expected to recognize him. 

Take the Transfiguration scene oa the 
Mount. The disciples knew that the two 
celestial visitors who appeared in company 
with Christ on that occasion, were Moses and 
Elijah. How they learned this fact, whether 
Jesus told them, or they gathered it from 
the conversation which they overheard, or 
knew from something in the appearance of 
these illustrious personages who they were — 
we are not informed. But if the disciples 
knew these two men, is it not reasonable to 
suppose that Moses and Elijah knew each 
other? And if Moses and Elijah, whose 
ministries on earth were separated by cen- 
turies, knew each other, is it not fair to sup- 
pose that other saints in heaven know each 
other? 

The parable of the rich man and Lazarus 
teaches us that Dives knew Abraham and 
recognized Lazarus. He remembered hia 
owTi life in this world, and the history and 
conduct of his brethren with whom he had 



ii Beyond the Stars. 

been intimately associated on the eai'th stood 
out distinctly before his mind. 

Man will be essentially the same through- 
out tho ceaseless millenniums of eternity. And 
as man he needs, with reverence be it said, 
more than the society of God and the angels 
to render the blessedness of heaven complete. 
He needs the society and companionship of 
his fellow-beings, those who are on a level 
with him and have had an equality of expe- 
rience. He who did not deem it " good for 
man to be alone " in the sinless paradise of 
earth, even when he enjoyed the society of 
God himself and had angels for his asso- 
ciates, knows that it would not be good for 
man to be alone even in the midst of celes- 
tial bliss, " and therefore He has provided 
for the association of the spirits of just men 
made perfect with each other. 

" He who dowered this earth with such 
strong personal attachments, the sweetest and 
best things in it, will not deprive heaven of 
them. He who united two fond hearts by 
the closest and most endearing ties of earth. 



Heavenly Recognition. 45 

will not beyond the grave, as the poet says, 
sever that united life in two, and bid each 
half live again and count itself the whole. 
Are they not as husband and wife heirs to- 
gether of eternal life ? The marriage union 
were but a poor image of the bond that 
unites Christ to His Church if it were loosed 
beyond the grave. It is true that there is 
neither marrying nor giving in marriage in 
heaven, for under new conditions there must 
be new relations ; but it is only that vrhich 
is temporary in marriage that is dissolved bji 
death, while that love in it which is im- 
mortal is purified and perfected. If in this 
life only we love, to extend the words of the 
apostle, we are indeed most miserable, con- 
sidering the preciousness of love and the 
frail tenure on which it hangs — the v^arm 
nest on the rotten bough. K on heaven's 
obhvious shore we have everlasting joy, but 
never more the friends that were dear to 
us here ; if to die is the disintegration of 
love, and reconstruction of it beyond the 
grave as an impersonal universal element 



46 Beyond the Stars. 

which all shall breathe equally ; if the man^ 
eions of the blessed are denuded of special 
and particular affections, and every one there 
shall be equally dear, and all shall be loved 
alike — there is nothing attractive in the pic- 
ture or prospect. We shrink from it with 
instinctive dislike. It is not what our warm 
hearts crave, for we know well that if we 
cease to love them with a positive, definite, 
individual love, we lose our memory and our 
identity; we cease to be ourselves. Our 
hearts protest against such a doctrine as that, 
and, blessed be God, it exists only in the vain 
imaginations of ignorant men ; it has no 
place in the Bible. In God's "Word we are 
told that we shall have the most endearing 
society in heaven ; that that society will in- 
clude those to whom we were most tenderly 
related by nature or pious fellowship, purged 
of all its selfishness and perpetuated in the 
purest and most blissful form forever. It is 
in order that human beings in heaven, while 
they love all the saints with pure hearts fer 
vently, may love individuals with a special 



Heavenly Recognition, 47 

individual love, and may be bound to them 
by special ties of gratitude and affection, that 
He makes them here the instruments of each 
other's salvation. Why are children com- 
mitted to the fostering care of parents with 
the injunction from the heavenly Father to 
train them up for Him ? Why are the ties 
of family and friendship so many consecrated 
channels through which the life-blood of re- 
ligion may flow from heart to heart ? Is it 
not that the family of God in heaven may 
be linked together by the special ties that 
bind them here ? " * 

Did not the Lord Jesus while lovino^ all 
His people, manifest a peculiar regard for 
some? Peter, James, and John were hon- 
ored by being admitted to a degree of closer 
intimacy than the other members of the 
apostolic band. They were witnesses of His 
transfiguration and of His agony in Geth- 
ssmane. He loved John more than any of 
His disciples. And of those outside of the 

* " Three Grre at Miracles," by Rev. Hugh Mac* 
millan, LL.D, 



iS Beyond the Stars. 

apostolic band He loved witli a special, per- 
sonal love, Mary and Martha and Lazarus. 
Is not JesTis " the same yesterday, to-day, 
and forever " ? Is He not the perfect model 
of His saints, whether on earth or in heaven ? 
Then heaven is not denuded of special and 
particular affection. Our loved ones who 
have passed into heaven, for whom our love 
has increased rather than diminished since 
their departure, have no more forgotten us 
or ceased to love us than we have forgotten 
them or ceased to love them. Though sin- 
less, transfigured, and glorious, they are still 
human and essentially the same as when they 
left us. They have met, recognized, and 
now associate with those whom they knew 
and loved here, who were in heaven before 
them, and they wait to welcome those whom 
they love who are to follow them. Could 
they speak to us we might hear them say ; 

'* O friends of mortal years, 
The trusted and the true, 
Ye are watching still in the valley of tears, 
But I wait to welcome you. 



Heavenly RecognitioTL. 49 

Do I forget ? O no 1 

For memory's golden chain 
Shall bind my heart to the hearts below, 

Till they meet to touch agaia." 



VI. 

LITTLE CHILDREIS" IN HEAVEK 

It is estimated that nearly one-half of the 
human race die in infancy. The whole tenor 
of the Gospel justifies us in believing that all 
who die previous to the age of responsibility 
are saved. 

There are several incidents recorded in the 
ministry of our blessed Lord, which show 
how great and tender was His regard for 
children. On one occasion. His disciples 
asked Him this question : " Who is the 
greatest in the kingdom of heaven ? " 
There seems to have been at the time in 
the room where they were sitting a little 
child. Jesus called this little child to Him, 
and it may be, placing him on His knee, 
told them that unless they were changed in 
disposition and exhibited the same freedom 
from pride and ambitious rivalry, that this 
(50) 



Little Children in Heaven, 51 

little child did, they could not enter the 
kin2:dom of heaven. He adds : '' Whoso- 
ever shall receive one such little child in 
my name receiveth me." '' See that ye 
despise not one of these little ones, for I say 
unto you that in heaven their angels do 
always behold the face of my Father which 
is in heaven." ^' It is not the will of your 
Father which is in heaven that one of these 
little ones should perish." Did not the 
disciples understand Him as assuring them 
that little children are the wards of angels 
of the highest rank ? and that it is the will 
of God that they should be saved ? 

On another occasion, when His disciples 
refused to permit parents to bring their 
children into His presence that He might 
lay His hands upon them, He said : " Suffer 
the little children and forbid them not to 
come unto me ; for of such is the kingdom 
of heaven." When He says here that the 
kingdom of heaven is made up of children, 
does He not mean real children as well as 
iiguratively those who possess child-like 



52 Beyond the Stars. 

qualities ? As we stand by the lifeless form 
of the young, whose future seemed bright 
with promise, and upon whose life the best 
interest and happiness of others seem to 
depend, why, we may ask, are they called 
away while others whose life work seems 
ended, and who are ready to go home, are left? 
One reason why death draws its victims 
from all ages is that human society in heaven 
may be marked by the same diversities of 
character and experience, which so power- 
fully contribute to its interest and happiness 
here. To see how sad this world would be 
if composed exclusively of one class, you 
have only to visit an institution for the 
support of the aged of either sex, or an 
asylum for the care of the young. Not- 
withstanding all that Christian kindness can 
do for such institutions to make them home- 
like, there is to the thoughtful mind and 
sensitive heart an element of sadness in the 
atmosphere of the place. How diflPerent is 
the family scene, where infancy, youth, 
maturity, and old age lovingly mingle, each 



Little Children in Heaven. 53 

borrowing and each lending — the young im- 
parting sunshine, the old, wisdom and dig- 
nity — all mutually benefited. There is noth- 
ing in the Word of Goi to forbid, and there 
is much in its implications and the nature of 
things to justify us in believing that not 
only will tbe differences in character and 
experience which mark the individual in this 
world be carried on in a transmuted form 
beyond the grave, but also that bodily differ- 
ences, which result from the different periods 
of life at which they are called into eternity, 
will continue. As a part of heaven is com- 
posed of human beings, who, by their pas- 
sage through the grave, are only changed in 
the sense of ennoblement, there, as well as 
here, the child, the youth, the middle-aged 
and the old will mingle and throw a charm 
around society by the special excellencies 
which are appropriate to each. Heaven will 
not lack in appearance and gifts that variety 
and diversity which lend glory and beauty 
to God's works whenever they fall within 
the range of human knowledge, whether in 



54 Beyond the Stars. 

the stellar heavens, or the fauna and flora 
of earth, or in the kingdom of men. This 
world is a field, God is the husbandman, and 
death is harvesting. As in the vegetable 
world, some plants have their richest use and 
are reaped in the flower, some in the fruit, 
and some in the seed, so God in His moral 
tillage of this world harvests some in child- 
hood, some in mature life, some in old age. 
It is true in heaven, all shall " be gifted with 
eternal youth, but that universal youth will 
not be incompatible with the preservation of 
those differences of years upon which He 
who knew when it was best to remove them, 
had at death set His seal and stamp for 
immortality. They shall never grow old; 
the glory of heaven shall never bring 
wrinkles, nor gray hair ; and the flight of 
millenniums will leave them unchanged. 
But those ages of life at which their growth 
here stopped, and which in the very oldest 
are but as a moment compared to eternity, 
will retain forever, amid all the transfigura- 
tion of the glorified state, much of the quali- 



Little Children in Heaven. 55 

ties wliicli distinguish them here — the inno- 
cence of the young, the dignity and maturity 
of those of riper years, and the cahn serenity 
and wisdom of the old." Did not the Apos- 
tle John in his apocalyptic vision hear a 
voice coming out of the throne in heaven, 
saying: "^ Give praise to our God, all ye his 
servants, ye that fear him, the small and the 
great." Did he not see " the great and the 
small standing before the great white 
throne " ? 

''Tell us," says Dr. Thomas Chalmers, 
"if Christianity does not throw a pleasing 
radiance around an infant's tomb ? And 
should any parent who hears us feel softened 
by the remembrance of the light that 
twinkled a few months under his roof, and 
at the end of its little period expired, we can- 
not think that we venture too far when we 
say that he is only to persevere in the faith 
and in the following of the Gospel, and that 
ray of light will again shine upon him in 
heaven. The blossom which withered here 
upon its stalk has been transplanted there 



56 Beyond the Stars, 

to a place of endurance; and it will there 
gladden that eye which now weeps out the 
agony of an affection which has been sorely 
wounded ; and in the name of Him, who, if 
on earth, would have wept along with them, 
do we bid all believers present to sorrow, not 
even as others which have no hope, but to 
take comfort in the hope of that country 
where there is no sorrow and no separation." 
May not parents, whose hearts have been 
saddened and their lives shadowed by the 
loss of children, find their feelings and hopes 
expressed in these lines, which have been 
entitled, " A Mother's Lament " : 

*' I loved thee, daughter of my heart! 

My child, I loved thee dearly ; 
And, though we only met to part^ 

How sweetly ! how severely ! 
Nor life nor death can sever 
My soul from thine forever. 

''Thy days, my little one, were few ; 

An angel's morning visit. 
That came and vanished with the dew— - 

'Twas here, 'tis gone — where is it? 
Yet didst thou leave behind thee 
A clue for love to hnd thee. 



Little Children in Heaven. 57 

^' The eye, the lip, the cheek, the brow, 

The hands stretched forth in gladness, 
^ And life, joy, rapture, beauty now 
Then dashed with infant sadness;. 
Till, brightening by transition, 
Retui^ned the fairy vision. 

''Where are they now — those smiles, those 
tears. 
Thy mother's darling treasure? 
She sees them still, and still she hears 

Thy tones of pain, or pleasure. 
To her quick pulse revealing 
Unutterable feeling. 

'' Sarah ! my last, my youngest love. 
The crown of every other 1 
Though thou art born in heaven above, 

I am thine only mother ; 
Nor will aflPection let me 
Believe thou canst forget me. 

" Then, thou in heaven and I on earth, 

May this one hope delight us, 
That thou wilt hail my second birth, 

When death shall reunite us, 
Where worlds no more can sever 
Parent and child forever." 



YII. 

THE EMPLOYMENT AND HOME LIFE OF 
THE GLORIFIED. 

What is the employment of the redeenied 
in the heavenly world ? The answer to this 
niter esting question mnst be based on the na- 
ture of the soul, and the Scriptural descrip- 
tions of heaven, rather than on any specific 
statements of the Bible. It will help us to 
true, realistic ideas of heaven if we keep 
clearly before our minds the design of Christ's 
redemptive work. Man was originally made 
in the image of God. The record is : " God 
created man in His own image ; in the image 
of God created He him." This means that 
God endowed man with those rational and 
moral attrib'ites which belong to Himself as 
a Spirit. If man had not sinned he would not 
have died, but at the end of the period of his 

probation his body would have undergone 

(58) 



The Employment of the Glorified, 59 

Bucli a change as would have rendered it im- 
mortal. " We shall not all sleep ; but we 
shall all be changed." The design of salva- 
tion is not to recreate man, in the sense of 
making him a new and different kind of a 
being from what he is. Regeneration does 
not alter the constitution of the soul, but 
changes its governing disposition, and fash- 
ions it anew after the image of God in knowl- 
edge, righteousness, and true holiness. The 
object of salvation is to restore man to the 
position which he once occupied as the child 
and companion of God. "Human nature 
will never cease to be human nature, or be 
changed into a different species of existence, 
no more than Jesus Christ, the head of His 
Church, will ever cease to be what He is — 
the man Christ Jesus, with a human body 
and a human soul, the same yesterday, to-day, 
and forever." 

When the soul quits the body, it carries 
with it into heaven all those innate and ac- 
quired mental idiosyncrasies and moral quali- 
ties which distinguished it on earth from all 



60 Beyond the Stars. 

others. If we regard oui friends wlio liave 
entered heaven as unchanged in the essential 
elements of their being, retaining their in- 
dividuality and all those characteristics vt^hich 
endeared them to us while on the earth, only 
freed from the limitations of this body, then 
there are certain employments in which it is 
both rational and Scriptural to suppose them 
to be engaged. One of these employments is 
praise. Praise is set forth in the Bible as 
constituting a conspicuous feature of the 
heavenly life. John was caught up into 
heaven, and was inspired by the Holy Spirit 
to describe, as pictorially and accurately as it 
is possible to portray celestial scenes in earth- 
ly language, what he saw and heard. He saw 
" four living creatures " — ^pictorial symbols of 
the creative work and providential govern- 
ment of God — surround the throne of the 
Eternal, ceaselessly singing, " Holy, holy, holy. 
Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and 
is to come." They are ceaseless, because there 
is no cessation in the honor which God re- 
ceives from His works and the various acts of 



The Emjployment of the Glorified, 61 

His providence. The four-and-twenty elders 
who represent saved sinners, and who were 
arrayed in white robes, and crowned with 
golden crowns, and seated on thrones, fell 
down before Him who sat on the central 
throne, and cast their golden crowns at His 
feet, saying : " Thou art worthy, Lord, to 
receive glory and honor and power, for Thou 
hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure 
they are and were created." Beside the eter- 
nal throne upon which Deity, in the person 
of the Father, sat, stood the Lord Jesus Christ, 
and in His pi esence the four-and-twenty el- 
ders fell down, and sung a new song, saying : 
*' Thou art worthy to take the book, and to 
open the seals thereof ; for Thou wast slain 
and hast redeemed us to God, by Thy blood, 
out of every tribe and tongue and people and 
nation ; and hast made us unto our God kings 
and priests." And the angels, to the number 
of "ten thousand times ten thousand and 
thousands of thousands," joined in this song, 
saying : " Worthy is the Lamb that was slain 
to receive power and riches and wisdom and 



62 Beyond the Stars. 

strength and honor and glory and blessing." 
John described what he saw — angels who had 
never sinned, and human beings who had 
sinned and who had passed from earth, to 
heaven, uniting in adoring ascriptions of praise 
and gratitude to God. He has reported to 
us the words of these heavenly songs. The 
thoughts and sentiments which they contain 
are the thoughts and sentiments of every one 
in this world who worships God in spirit and 
in truth. As the life of the saint in heaven is 
a continuance of the life he began here, his 
worship and praise differs not in kind, only 
in degree, from what it did here. As the 
glorified saints are sinless, and with them 
faith has given way to sight, and hope has 
been merged into fruition, their praise is 
more rapturous and ecstatic. But it is not to 
be supposed that they spend all their time in 
singing. There is nothing irrational or un- 
scriptural in supposing that there are stated 
periods in heaven, as there are on earth — 
great days of the Lord — when saints and an- 
gels gather from all parts of heaven before 



The Employment of the Glorified. 63 

the Lord, and give expression to their exult 
ant joy in rapturous and thriUing songs which 
fill heaven with the echo. 

Another employment of heaven is the ac- 
quisition of knowledge. To say that the hu- 
man mind is cultivatable and expansible is to 
state the merest truism. Look at the obsta- 
cles it has overcome, the discoveries it has 
made, and the wonderful things which it has 
achieved through the ages that are past. 
Still, there is no indication that it has called 
into active operation all its latent forces, or 
touched the limit of its power in any particu- 
lar direction. After all, how little do men 
know of the secrets of the universe in which 
they live — of the nature of the forces which 
lie behind phenomena ! No doubt the future 
will chronicle greater discoveries, sublimer and 
more brilliant intellectual achievements than 
the past records. Earthly existence is the 
period of the mind's childhood. There is a 
great difference between the mind of a child 
and the mind of a sage ; between Goethe and 
a German peasant, Newton and an English 



64 Beyond the Stars. 

ploughman, Emerson and a Georgian negro 
But there is a greater difference between the 
wisest philosopher on earth and one who has 
passed out of the conditions of time and sense 
into the spirit world. JN'ew wonders and 
glories in creation, exhibiting the manifold 
wisdom and power of God, on a scale far sur- 
passing the loftiest attainments of the wisest 
of men, burst upon the minds of the glorified, 
and open up to their contemplation endless 
avenues of knowledge. The mysteries of 
Providence which baflfle and perplex us, they 
understand. The things of revelation which 
are too deep for us to fathom, and too lofty 
for us to scale, they clearly apprehend. Nev/ 
wonders — deep mysteries pertaining to God, 
His works, acts, and purposes — are constantly 
unfolding themselves to their minds, and 
widening the range of their knowledge. 
Paul, in contrasting the limitation and im- 
perfection of our knowledge in this world 
with what it will be in the \^orld to come, 
says : " JNTow we see through a glass daikly 
Dut then face to face ; now I know in part 



The Employment of the Glorified, 65 

but then shall I know even as I am 
linown," 

We hesitate not to believe that the same 
diversity which marks society in this lower 
world will characterize the society of heaven, 
and that it has spheres of employment suited 
to the powers and capacities of those who 
enter it. God has made no two things ex- 
actly alike. This is true everywhere. Take 
the tube of the astronomer and sweep the 
glittering vault of night, and in its depths 
you will find no two stars that are exactly 
alike. Here is Mars, glowing with his crim- 
son hue ; there is Jupiter, with his attendant 
moons, and yonder is Saturn, girdled with his 
mysterious rings. ^' There is one glory of the 
sun, and another glory of the moon, and an- 
other glory of tlie stars; for star differeth 
from star in glory." As in the starry realm, 
so in the vegetable world there are generic 
L'kenesses with specific differences. ITo two 
blades of grass, no two roses, no two trees, no 
two plants in earth's flora are exactly alike. 
The same diversity exists in the kingdom oJ 



66 Beyond the Stars. 

men. l^o two human bodies, no two human 
faces, no two human voices, are in every par- 
ticular tlie same. A like dissimilarity is ex- 
hibited in characters which have been moulded 
by divine grace. God never casts two human 
beings in exactly the same form. There is 
Abraham the patriarch, Moses the lawgiver, 
Samuel the jndge, David the king, Elijah the 
reformer, Daniel the statesman, Ezra the the- 
ologian, Nehemiah the patriot, Paul the mis- 
sionary, and John the seer. How unlike, in 
many particulars, these great men are. Tet 
each was a chosen workman of God. The 
same dissimilarity exists among the inhabit- 
ants of heaven. "While all of them are per- 
fectly happy np to the measure of their ca- 
pacit}^, there is a difference in the degrees of 
their capacity for enjoying. So there are de- 
grees of brilliancy, degrees of power, degrees 
of honor in heaven, as the reward of faithful 
and heroic service here. If the Christian life 
here is a training-school for the life hereafter, 
then the gifts cultivated and the sinless habits 
acvinired in this world, will have an influence 



Tlce Home Life of the Glorified, 67 

in fitting men for tlie different spheres oi 
activity in the heavenly world. It may be 
that one part of the employment of glorified 
Baints is the same as the angels' — ^to act as 
messengers of God to distant worlds in vari- 
ous parts of the universe. 

Man is a social being, and in heaven there 
is provision made for this part of his nature. 
Heaven is a vast and populous world, and 
contains "many mansions." Each one may 
possess a mansion — "a building of God, a 
house not made with hands " — that will cor- 
respond to the nature of that land and the 
body there worn as truly as our present 
houses correspond to this world and these 
material bodies. " From scenes of surpassing 
glory, and from the public services of un- 
utterable joy that crowd heaven, the redeemed 
need places of retirement where they may 
gather and compose their thoughts in medita- 
tion, and receive the full benefit of theii 
public outgoings." ^ 

**' Paradise," by Kev. Robert M. Patterson,, 
D.D., page 201. 



68 Beyond the Stars. 

In these mansions the redeemed meet foi 
purposes of social intercourse and mutual ed« 
ification. Tliej tell each other of their expe- 
rience in that glorious land, and converse 
about the things in which they are mutually 
interested. 

" What if earth 
Be but the shadow of heaven ? and things 

therein 
Each to other hke, more than on earth is 

thought;' 

"As knowledge here is acquired by the 
aid of instructors, why," asks Dr. Archibald 
Alexander, " may not the same be the fact in 
heaven ? What a delightful employment to 
the saints who have been drinking in tlie 
knowledge of God and His works for thou- 
sands of years, to communicate instruction to 
the saints just arrived ! How delightful to 
conduct the pilgrim, who has just finished 
his race, througli the endless, blooming bow- 
ers of Paradise, and to introduce him to this 
and the other ancient believer, and to assist 
him to find out and recognize among so great 
a multitude old friends and earthly relatives." 



The Home Life of the Glorified, 69 

The attributes and laws of the human soul, 
and the intimations and implications of the 
Scriptures, justify us in believing that our 
Joved ones who have passed into heaven are 
not so changed as to be unrecognizable, nor 
have they entered upon a mode of existence 
utterly inconceivable. They retain their in- 
dividuality and the sinless characteristics which 
\ ndeared them to us here. Freed from the 
1 imitations of time and sense, they are more 
J lorious than they were. They are conscious- 
ly and blissfully in the presence of God, in 
the society of Jesus, in the companionship of 
angels and sinless fellow-beings, engaged in 
such services as the powers with which they 
were originally dowered and the discipline of 
this world fitted them. We speak of them 
as dead. Ijut — 

'* Death is another hfe. We bow our heads 
At going oat, we think, and enter straight 
Another golden chamber of the King's, 
Larger than this, and Iot elier." 



VIII. 

THE EELATION OF DEPARTED SAINTS 
TO THIS WORLD. 

What relation do glorified human spirits 
sustain to this world ? Do they still retain an 
interest in it ? Do they know anything that 
occurs here ? 

It has already been shown that the spirits 
of the just made perfect are in the same 
place with the angels, and have them for 
companions. The Bible reveals the fact that 
angels visit this earth, study with keenest in- 
terest the unfolding purposes of divine love 
and mercy for man, and thereby obtain new 
and enlarged views of the interior nature of 
God and of His infinite attributes. "The 
principalities and powers in heavenly places" 
— the various orders of good angels — attain 
their highest conceptions of "the manifold 
wisdom of God," new disp ays of His in^ 



Departed Saints. Yl 

finite wisdom, power, and grace, through the 
church. These angels bend witli benevolent 
sympathy over our race, encamp as invisible 
guards around good men, and in circum- 
stances of extremity and peril render them 
necessary helpful aid. Ton could not elimi- 
nate from the ]SI"ew Testam.ent its angehc 
incidents without destroying its beautiful 
consistency and sadly mutilating its gleaming 
pages. Take a few instances of angelic 
agency. It was an angel who pre-heralded 
the birth both of the son of Eliza])eth and 
the Son of Mary, and announced the dawn 
of the new dispensation. On the night of 
Jesus' advent angels hovered near the spot 
of His nativity, and in the ears of the star- 
tled sliepherds sang — sang more marvellously 
than when " the morning stars sang together, 
and all the sons of God shouted for joy " — 
that celestial anthem that still goes on echo- 
ing do^^oi through the ages, 

" Grlory to Grod in the highest. 
And on earth peace, good- will toward men.-' 



72 Beyond the Stars. 

Angels seemed to have watched His con- 
flict of forty days with Satan, for after 
Satan's defeat and withdrawment, they min- 
istered to Him. An angel came to Him as 
He lay at midnight in agony of spirit upon 
the cold ground. His brow covered with 
beads of crimsoned sweat, and strengthened 
Him. Angels stood by the empty tomb and 
proclaimed His resurrection, and were pres- 
ent on the occasion of His ascension, and 
foretold the manner of His return. An 
angel appeared to the devout Cornelius while 
he was engaged in prayer, and instructed him 
how and where to obtain the knowledge he 
needed. An angel visited Peter in prison, 
knocked the shackles from his limbs, threw 
open its bolted doors, led him safely through 
the sleeping guards, and set him free. But 
why particularize? Is it not declared that 
they are all ministering spirits engaged in 
rendering helpful service to the heirs of sal- 
vation? If the angels are constant visitors 
to this earth, and are engaged, both when we 
wake and when we sleep, in carrying out 



Departed Saints, 73 

God's coinmands relative to His people; if 
tliey are present at the bedside of dying 
saints to conduct their spirits to heaven ; if 
they know when each sinner is converted 
and participate in the rejoicing which takes 
place in heaven over the salvation of an im- 
mortal soul — all of whicli is taught in the 
Scriptures with a clearness and an explicit- 
ness which no one questions — and if the 
glorified saints are the associates of the 
angels, is it not reasonable to suppose that 
even through the angels they know some- 
thing of what is going on in this world ? If 
there is joy in heaven when it is reported 
that sinners on earth have turned from Satan 
unto God, who could more appreciatively 
participate in that joy, and swell its volume, 
than those who had once been sinners ? 

Has the fact tliat Christ has taken up His 
residence in heaven, and is, from His invis- 
ible throne, conducting the afi^airs of His 
kingdom, weakened His love for His people 
on earth or diminished His interest in the 
triumph of truth and righteousness? Doesf 



Y4 Beyond the Stars. 

not the crowning glory and happiness of the 
believer consist in being with the Lord Jesus 
and being like Him, delighting in what He 
delights, and rejoicing in what He rejoices? 
As He is deeply interested in the salvation 
of individual men and women, is it foolisli, 
is it rash, to suppose that the saints in 
heaven, many of whom sacrificed, suffered, 
and even died for the cause of truth and the 
^dndication of righteousness, are deeply in- 
terested in those events occurring on the earth 
which affect the prosperity of the Church 
and the eternal welfare of men? To the 
questions — Do the glorified still retain an in- 
terest in this world ? and do they know any- 
thing of what is taking place here ? — we hesi- 
tate not to answer, yes, yes. It is as easy tc 
conceive of man in the maturity of his powers, 
forgetting the scenes of his boyhood home, 
as it is to conceive of those who have passed 
from earth to heaven, forgetting their lives 
here. 

But do glorified human spirits ever revisit 
the scenes of their former activity ? Do thej 



Dej)artecl Saints, 75 

ever come back to this earth? We listen 
with breatliless interest to the answer God'a 
Word gives to this question. It tells us thai 
Moses and Elijali appeared in company with 
Jesus in the presence of three of His dis- 
ciples on the Mount of Transfiguration and 
talked with Him. The subject of their con- 
versation has been reported. Tliey talk with 
Him about the sufferings and death which 
He was soon to endure in Jerusalem, and the 
magnificent results whicli would be achieved 
thereby. This incident teaches two truths. 
It shows us tlie possibihty of glorified spirits 
revisiting this earth. What was possible in 
the case of Moses and Elijah, is possible 
for other glorified spirits. It shows us that 
the glorified saints do take an interest in 
some things which occur in this world. Moses 
and Elijah, the representatives of the saints 
then in heaven, were deeply interested in the 
work of Christ. 

But the Scriptures go farther than this. 
They assure us that we are surrounded by a 
great multitude of glorified spirits, who hang 



76 Beyond the Stars. 

over us like a cloud of spectators to witness 
our progress in the Christian race. The in- 
spired writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews 
says, ''we are encompassed by so great a 
cloud of witnesses." " That the souls of be- 
lievers/' says Dr. Junkin, " being separated 
from the body, should be employed as angels 
are, ministering to the living saints, is in 
itself so reasonable that I should entertain 
the sentiment if the Bible were silent on the 
subject. The general prevalence of ghost 
stories, the popular belief on this subject so 
extensively prevalent, must have some foun- 
dation in fruth. Superstition itself is but a 
perversion of truth. If utterly inconsistent, 
superstitions could not control men as they 
often do. It is their consistency with reason 
that gives them power. I can see nothing 
unreasonable in the conception that the souls 
of dead believers are employed like the 
angels of glory as messengers of mercy to 
living saints. It may be objected that we 
have no knowledge of it. We have no 
knowledge of angelic ministrations, and yet 



Dejparted Saints. 77 

the Bible affirms them as realities. We have 
no knowledge of our sonl's activity when we 
are asleep ; but do you believe that the soul 
is therefore inactive ? " What are some of 
our dreams? " They may be but the dying 
whispers of interviews with other spirits con- 
fusedly echoing through the inlets of clay." 
" How pleasant the thought tliat our beloved 
friends who enjoy in glory the complete 
atonement, are permitted to visit us while 
we still linger in the vale below. In how 
many ways do they snatch us from temp- 
tation, do they whisper to our spirits, This 
is the way we travelled — it leads to the 
heavenly home. How sweet the thought 
that our dear departed ones stand by the 
dying couch and witness our last struggle 
and strengthen us against temptation; and 
the moment of our release, oh, with what 
glad emotions do our freed spirits, now in 
open recognition of their presence, embrace 
them and with them wing their way to the 
heavenly glory ! Who, oh, who among the 
countless throng, — oh, who among the teu 



78 Beyond the Stars. 

thousand times ten thousand th^^t stand be- 
fore the blessed Jesus — who so likely to de- 
sire and expect the embassage to our dying 
couch — who so likely to obtain it as those 
who with us have fought tlie good fight of 
faith and finished their course with joy ; and 
who have but recently travelled the road 
to glory and to God." ^ 

Ahj were not these eyes withholden^ — could 
> re see the invisible and the spiritual as we 
« hall see them when we lay aside these taber- 
nacles of clay — how often might we find that 
those whom death has taken from our side, 
and whom we are accustomed to think of as 
far off in some distant part of God's universe, 
are near us. "Perhaps," said Dr. Guthrie, 
as he lay d^dng — in alluding to the death of 
his youngest child, who had died many years 
before, " the greatest trial in all my life was 
when I lifted the clay-cold body and laid it 
in his little cofiin. Ay, though his littJe feet 
never run on this earth, I think I see him 



♦"CoDimentary on the Epistle to the He* 
brews." 



Dejparted Saints, 79 

mnning to meet me at the golden gate.'' 
More than Dr. Guthrie indulge the fond 
anticipation of happy meetings and eternal 
reunions. 

*' Over the river they beckon to me, 

Loved ones who've crossed to the farther 
side, 
Tlie gleam of their snowy robes I see, 
But their voices are drowned in the rush* 
ing tide.'' 



IX. 

THE RESURKECTION BODY. 

W HiLE the Scriptures teach that believers, 
at death, do immediately pass into heaven 
and enter upon a career of unspeakable glory, 
they also teach that they have not yet attained 
to their highest state of bliss. Their state of 
perfect bhss will be attained when God shall 
give them back their bodies, which He is to 
raise, transfigured ^nd. deathless, out of the 
ashes of the sepulchre. When will this inter- 
mediate state — this ;>eriod of disseverance of 
the soul from the body — end ? It will end at 
the second coming ui Christ. The Lord Jesus 
Christ k to return again to this world in per- 
son, to right its wrongs and settle up its affairs 
on the principles of infinite equity. The 
manner of His return will, in splendor, com- 
port with the dignity of His person. He Him- 
(80) 



The liesurrection Body. 81 

self lias said : " Tlie Son of Man shall come 
in His glory, and all the holy angels with 
Him.'' The angels who appeared to the dis- 
ciples at the moment of His ascension, as they 
stood gazing up into heaven at the spot where 
He had disappeared, said : " This same Jesns 
which is taken up from you into heaven shall 
so come in like manner as ye have seen Him 
go into heaven.'' Paul wrote to the Thessa- 
lonians : " If we believe that Jesus died and 
rose again, even so them, also, that are asleep 
in Jesus will God bring with Him. For this 
we say unto you by the Word of the Lord, 
that we that are alive, that are left unto the 
coming of the Lord, shall in no wise precede 
them that are fallen asleep. For the Lord 
himself shall descend from heaven with a 
shout, with the voice of the archangel, and 
with the trump of God, and the dead in 
Christ sliall rise first." John also writes: 
^' Behold, He cometh with clouds ; and every 
eye shall see Him." These passages teach us 
that the Lord sliall return in celestial, regal 
glory, and that His visible appearance in the 



82 Beyond the Stars. 

clouds, accompanied by the angelic and re- 
deemed hosts of heaven, will be announced 
by a signal cry ; by the sound of a trumpet 
that will be heard by all the inhabitants of 
the earth. At what particular time in the re- 
volving centuries the Lord will return in per- 
son we know not. We only know that a 
fixed time in the secret counsels of God has 
been appointed, when the present order of 
things shall be brought to a close. He may 
not come in our lifetime. Millenniums may 
roll by before God's appointed day arrives. 
The first act in the closing drama of this 
world will be the resurrection of the bodies 
of the saints. " The dead in Christ shall rise 
first.'' 

In discussing the question of the resurrec- 
tion of the body with some Corinthian Chris- 
tians who denied it, Paul sets it forth as an 
essontial factor of Christianity. To deny it, 
he declares, is to brand Christ as a deceiver, 
stamp the Gospel as a tissue of falsehoods, af- 
firm that the early disciples, who sealed their 
testimony witli their blood, were conscious 



The liesuTvection Body, 83 

and deliberate liars, and that the good who 
had departed this life are annihilated. " If 
there be no resurrection of the dead, then is 
Christ not risen. And if Christ be not risen, 
tlien is our preaching vain, and your faith is 
also vain. Tea, and we are found false wit- 
nesses of God ; because we have testified of 
God that He raised up Christ, if so be that 
the dead rise not." He supposes an objector 
to raise two questions, viz.: "How are the 
dead raised up ? And with what body do they 
come ? " Mark how Paul, guided by the Holy 
Spirit, answers these two questions. First, 
" How are the dead raised up ? '' He answers 
this question by analogies drawn from nature. 
He does not adduce these analogies as proofs 
of the resurrection. The resurrection of the 
body is a pure doctrine of revelation, incapa- 
ble of being demonstrated by reason from the 
facts which nature supplies. These analogies 
are adduced for the purpose of making plain 
to the minds of those who regard the resur- 
rection of the body as inconceivable its possi- 
bility aad credibility, by showing that events 



84 Beyond the Stars. 

analogous to it were constantly occurring 
around them. His first illustration is drawn 
from the laws of vegetable reproduction, and 
is designed to show that death is often a con- 
dition of a new and higher form of life. 
"Thou fool, that which thou so west is not 
quickened except it die." Thou foolish one 
who considerest the resurrection of the body 
to be inconceivable and impossible, what be- 
comes of the seed planted in the ground? 
Does it not ferment, disintegrate, rot and die, 
in order that it may live again? Death for 
the seed does not mean annihilation, only dis- 
solution — the passing out of one mode of ex- 
istence into another. May the same not be 
true of the human body ? If decay and de- 
composition on the part of the seed are a nec- 
essary condition of a new and higher form 
of life, may they not also be the necessary 
prelude and the prognostic of a grander and 
more glorious mode of existence for the hu- 
man body ? ''That which thou so west, thou 
Bowest not that body that shall be." When 
you sow seed, that which springs up differs 



The liesurrection Body. 85 

in outward form from that which you planted. 
The seed dies, and out of it springs a blade ; 
tlien the blade changes into a stock with a 
flower on it. How different in outward form 
\s the beautiful green stock, waving in the 
wind, from the sere little seed which you 
sowed. Tet, notwithstanding the great out- 
ward changes which each seed undergoes, it 
preserves its identity. If you plant wheat 
you reap wheat, and if you plant corn you 
reap corn. Each seed preserves that particu- 
lar form or body which God was .pleased, in 
His infinite wisdom, to give it at creation. 
The point of the illustration is this — that the 
future body may differ from our present body 
as much as the waving grain in the simamer 
sun differs from the bare, dry seed sowed in 
the ground. Yet, as the seed sowed preserves 
its identity amid all the changes of form 
which it undergoes, so the immortal and glori- 
fied human body will be essentially the same 
as the present body. The two things which 
this analogy drawn from the laws of vege- 
table reproduction teaches are: First, that 



86 Beyond the Stars. 

death does not necessarily imply destruction' 
it is sometimes the necessary condition for a 
higher and more glorious manifestation of 
life; and second, tliat outward form may 
change, and yet identity be still preserved. 
If physiological science be true, the human 
body, by the assimilation of new matter and 
the excretion of old matter, undergoes a 
complete chauge in seven years. ]!^otwith- 
standing the fact that the man of seventy has 
had ten bodies, and that his body has been 
changed repeatedly in size and expression, is 
he not conscious of being the same person 
that he was in boyhood ? Is it not then con- 
ceivable that the human body will preserve 
what is essential to its identity, amid all the 
changes which await it in the grave, until it 
emerge from it a glorious and immortal 
body? 

The second analogical argument used by 
Paul is that the same substance may assume 
many forms. This is seen in the fact that 
there is a great difference between earthly 
bodies. '^ All flesh is not the same flesh ; but 



TliG ResiLvrGction Body. 87 

tliere is one kind of flesh of men, anotliei 
flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another 
of birds." Originally all flesh was formed 
ont of the same fundamental elements. The 
bodies of fishes, birds, beasts, and men are 
composed of flesh and blood. But how dif- 
ferent in kind and form is the flesh of these 
vai*ious orders in the animal kingdom. The 
inference is that if God out of the same 
fundamental elements could fashion the vari- 
ous orders of animals which inhabit the 
globe, each adapted to its environments, is it 
supposable that His power is exhausted and 
that no new exhibition of it will be witnessed 
when the buried bodies of His saints are 
raised ? 

The answer of Paul to him who objected 
to the possibility and credibility of the resur- 
rection on the ground that when the human 
body dies it returns to its original elements, 
and these elements may in turn enter into 
the fibres of plants, and through them into 
the tissues of animals, and subsequently be- 
come incorporated in other human bodies; 



88 Beyond the Stars. 

and consequently it is incredible that God 
slionld raise up these bodies again, since the 
atoms v/hich compose them might have been 
in a thousand other human bodies, is, as we 
have seen, twofold : First, the resurrection of 
the body is possible and conceivable from 
the fact that analogous events are constantly 
occurring in the vegetable world under our 
own eyes ; second, from the fact that matter 
is capable of endless modifications. If God 
can fashion the same matter into the granite 
of the hills and the waters of the sea, the 
clods of the valley and the hues of the rain- 
bow, into waving verdure and golden fruit, the 
monster of the sea and the navigator of the 
air, the beast of field and forest, and the ex- 
pressive features of the human face, is it not 
absurd to say that our future bodies must 
be gross material bodies like our present 
bodies? The resurrection body may still 
be a body essentially the same as this body^ 
and yet differ from it in appearance, as 
much as the waving grain differs from the 
decaying kernel in the moist soil, or sun 



The Resurreciion Body. 89 

lit cloud differs from the lustreless clay 
Is God all-powerful? Did He of old call 
out of the matrix of nonentity the mat- 
ter of which this globe was formed? Was 
man's body originally formed from the dust 
by His creative fiat ? Why then should it be 
thought a thing incredible that God should 
raise the dead ? For Him as a Being to 
whose power no limit can be set, all things 
are possible. 

The second question is, " With what man- 
ner of body do they come ? " The apostle 
replies that the resurrection body will differ 
in inward qualities as well as in outward 
aspect from our present bodies. " It is sown 
in corruption." That is, the human body is 
laid in the grave, as the seed is planted in 
the ground, hable to corruption and decay. 
It is laid there, not to be lost, but to await 
the resurrection day, when it will be " raised 
in incorruption " — no longer liable to decay. 
" It is sown in dishonor." When the human 
body is laid in the grave, decomposition hav- 
ing secretly commenced its destructive work, 



90 Beyond the Stars. 

it is stripped of the beauty and attractiveness 
it possessed while living. It is necessary to 
conceal it from view. But it will be " raised 
in glory." It will come forth in a form of 
resplendent brightness and nameless beauty 
that will awaken wonder and admiration. 
" It is sown in weakness." The human body 
in the prime of its power is weak. Care has 
to be taken not to unduly tax its strength or 
strain its energies, lest it break down and 
become a wreck. Even with the most judi- 
cious care, its power soon wanes. At death 
it is absolutely stripped of all power. But it 
will be " raised in power." It will be raised 
in the possession of an energy, elasticity, and 
power that will render it a fit abode for the 
enlarged capacities and new functions of the 
glorified spirit. " It is sown a natural body." 
A natural body is an organism composed of 
flesh and blood, requiring food, air, and rest. 
But it will be " raised a spiritual body," 
needing none of these things. 

Our present bodies possess five senses, 
through which we obtain whatever knowl- 



Tlie Besurrection Body. 91 

edge we possess of tlie universe. The glorj 
of the resurrection body may be somewhat 
dimly conceived by reflecting how wonder- 
fully our knowledge and power would be en- 
larged by these senses simply being increased 
in range and acuteness. Take the organ of 
hearing. Why is there such marvellous silence 
in a tropical forest at noonday ? The stillness 
is in part due to the dullness of our hearing. 
It is possible to conceive of this organ being 
rendered so acute and sensitive that the little 
currents flowing through the cells of the trees 
would break upon the ear like the roar of 
Niagara. "We communicate with one an- 
other here upon the earth by means of speech, 
and as it is only needful and desirable that 
we should do so at verv limited distances, it is 
but a small circle of the space around it that 
the human voice can fill so as to be distinctly 
audible to its outer edge. Beyond that, the 
sound dies away and is lost. This arises not 
from the feebleness of an organ alone, but 
chiefly from the air being comparatively so 
dull and sluggish a medium for conveying 



92 Beyond the IStars. 

sound. We know. at least of other mediums 
which are far more careful of any movements 
committed to them ; which do not suffer thera 
to be soon dissipated and lost ; which trans- 
mit them with far greater velocity. The 
medium or element, for instance, through 
which light passes is of this nature. Light 
travels through that medium six hundred and 
eighty times quicker than sound does. It 
takes but a few minutes to come to us from 
the sun. ITow let us only conceive that, in- 
stead of having a vehicle which can carry its 
passengers so short a way, and at comparative- 
ly so slow a pace, sound had a vehicle as ethe- 
real and elastic as light has — let us conceive 
that, instead of there being a difference be- 
tween them, there were a sameness ; that the 
Almighty so ordered it, as He so easily could, 
that the sound of a human voice could travel 
side by side with a sunbeam, uttered this mo- 
ment upon the earth, it could be heard a few 
moments afterward among the stars. Let 
the Creator of all things make but this single 
nnd simple change, then at once within easy 



Tlie Resurrection Body. 93 

reacli of each other would the inhabitants of 
the most distant worlds be placed, and, had 
they but a common language, could just as 
easily converse across the vast fields of space 
as we can liere converse across the breadth of 
a few hundred yards ; the question and answer 
might pass to and fro ; and one hour's such 
converse, to how many questions which have 
occupied the most thoughtful men for centu- 
ries would it furnish a reply ! " * 

What new and startling revelations are now 
possible by a simple enlargement of the pow- 
ers of our senses ! May the resurrection body 
not only have our present senses increased in 
their range and acuteness a million-fold, but 
new senses now unknown to us added ? 

The Scriptures assure us of three things in 
regard to the resurrection body. First, it will 
not be composed of flesh and blood like our 
present bodies, because " flesh and blood can- 
not inherit the kingdom of God." Second, it 
will be incorruptible, glorious, powerful, im- 

* "The Resurrection of the Dead,'* by Rev. 
WilliaiTQ Hanna, D.D., page 177, 



94 Beyond the Stars. 

mortal — a body adapted to the conditions oi 
that world where God, in the visible splen< 
dors of His uncreated glories, dwells — and 
fitted for the enlarged capacities and new 
tunctions of the glorified spirit. Third, it will 
be like the glorified body of Christ, for at 
His coming He will " change our vile body " 
— or body of humiliation — " that it may be 
fashioned Hke unto His glorious body, accord- 
ing to the working whereby He is able even 
to subdue all things unto Himself." When 
Christ was transfigured in the presence of His 
disciples, " His face did shine as the sun, and 
His raiment was white as the hght." This 
transfiguration adumbrates what the glory of 
the resurrection body shall be. When the 
apostle John in vision saw Him in His glori- 
fied body, His countenance beamed as brill* 
iantly as the sun shining in his strength. 
His eyes glowed like a flame of fire, and His 
feet shone like burning brass. We shall be 
like Him. In trying to form a conception 
of the glory of the future body of the saints 
we may safely give free rein to fancy, because 



The Resurrection Body. 95 

the glorious reaKty cannot be surpassed. 
"Eye liatli not seen, nor ear heard, neither 
hath it entered into the heart of man" the 
glorj which God, in this particular, hath in 
reserve for His people. The saints who have 
accompanied Christ from heaven to earth, on 
the occasion of His second advent, will be 
clothed again with the same bodies which 
they once wore — the same in form, though 
changed in essential q^ualities, and dowered 
with exhaustless energy and surpassing, fade- 
less beauty. The bodies of behevers then liv- 
ing will, in the twinkling of an eye, undergo 
such a change as shall render them immortal. 
On the Resurrection day, when the power of 
death has been forever annulled, and Christ's 
redeemed ones shall stand before Him, glori- 
fied spirits in glorified bodies, then shall they 
be able to say in rapturous triumph : " O 
death, where is thy sting ? O grave, where 
is thy victory ? Thanks be unto God, which 
giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus 
Christ" 



X. 



THE EELi^TION OF THE SAINTS TO THE 
GENERAL JUDGMENT. 

The second act in the closing drama of 
this world will be the Judgment. The resur- 
rection of the wicked is to follow the resur- 
rection of the saints. Imagine this earth 
hollow with sepulchres at the sound of " the 
trump of God/' quivering from pole to pole 
as it yields up its dead. The sea will sur- 
render all those who fell victims to its fury, 
and found a grave in its depths. Fror-i 
battle-fields once soaked with human blood, 
from the ruins of once populous cities, from 
thousands of rural and urban graveyards, 
from almost every spot of this heaving eartlij 
on that great day will human bodies spring 
into existence. 

One of tlie most impressive spectacles or^ 
(96) 



The General Judgment. 97 

wMcli mortal eye can gaze, is a vast throng 
of upturned human faces. It would be an 
imposing spectacle to see all the inhabitants 
of New York or Brooklyn gathered in one 
place earnestly deliberating on a question of 
vital importance to each one. No one could 
contemplate such a scene without feeling its 
impressiveness. How much more vast and 
impressive would be the spectacle if all the 
people of this nation — its fifty millions of 
inhabitants — met under similar circumstances. 
Imagine a spectacle still more overpowering, 
an assembly in which all the people now 
living on the earth have met, and yet this 
furnishes but a very inadequate idea of the 
vastness of that multitude that will stand at 
last before the judgment-seat of Christ. 
Could I by an exercise of Almightiness flat- 
ten out this earth into a great plain, and then 
could I take you to some elevated position in 
the air and endow you with such powers of 
vision that you could see everything that is 
occurring among its inhabitants, you would 
find that continuously, without pause or in* 



98 Beyond the Stars. 

terruption, day and night, winter and sum* 
mer, springtime and harvest, in some part of 
the earth human bodies are being committed 
to the grave. And this same thing has been 
going on for centuries upon centuries. O 
what a long, wide procession, stretching back 
into the dim centuries, is that which is 
steadily with noiseless tread, at the rate of a 
hundred thousand souls a day, moving out 
of this world into the invisible world. The 
present estimated population of the earth 
is nearly fourteen hundred millions, and in 
less than half a century they will all be sleep- 
ing in the dust. 

'* All that tread the earth are but a handful 
To the tribes that slumber in its bosom." 

Each centurj^ that intervenes between the 
period in which we live and the judgment, 
will see thrice the present population of the 
gvobe sink into the tomb. K'umbers fail to 
convey the faintest idea of the immenseness 
of that multitude which will gather before 
the judgment-seat of Christ at the last day. 



The General Judgment 99 

To swell the number and add to the im- 
pressiveness of that scene the fallen angels 
will appear. This fact is stated by Peter : 
" God spared not the angels that sinned, but 
cast them down to hell and delivered them 
into chains of darkness to be reserved unto 
the judgment." Similar in purport are the 
words of Jude : " The angels which kept 
not their first estate, but left their own habi- 
tation. He hath reserved in everlasting chains 
under darkness unto the judgment of the 
great day." John caught a glimpse in his 
apocalyptic vision of what the judgment 
scene will be, and thus describes it : "I saw 
a great white throne, and Him that sat on it, 
from whose face the earth and the heavens 
fled away ; and there was found no place for 
them. And I saw the dead, small and great, 
stand before God; and the books were 
opened ; and another book was opened which 
is the book of life ; and the dead were judged 
out of those things which were written in 
the books according to their works." 

Blending the various Scriptural descrip 



100 Beyond the Stars. 

tioiis of the final judgment we have this pic- 
ture. On that great day the Lord Jesna 
\dll, in His glorified human nature, sit en- 
throned in the clouds surrounded by all 
the holy angels. Before Him will be gath- 
ered the whole human race, all who have 
ever lived on this earth from Adam onward, 
and all the fallen angels. The saints, clothed 
in glorious bodies like Christ's own body, 
will be on His right hand, and His enemies, 
human and angelic, on His left hand. But 
the question is, what relation do the saints 
sustain to the final judgment? Are they 
there to be tried and judged ? 

There are many passages in the Scriptures 
which teach with great clearness that be- 
lievers in Christ, those who have passed into 
the heavenly w^orld, and those who are still 
on earth, have entered a condition of life in 
which they are not subject to the general 
judgment. Christ's own words on this 
point are, according to the rendering of the 
revised edition, " Yerily, verily, I say unto 
you, He that heareth my word and believeth 



The General Judgment. 101 

Him that sent me, hath eternal life^ and 
Cometh not into judgment, but hath passed 
out of death into life." That is, the believer 
has passed out of that state of sin and guilt 
that belongs to the judgment, and when the 
judgment comes he has therefore no part in 
it. Again, Christ says : " The hour cometh 
in which all that are in the tombs shall hear 
His voice and come forth : they that have 
done good, unto the resurrection of life ; and 
they that have done ill, unto the resiu'rection 
of judgment." The resurrection for the 
good is the rising body and soul into the full 
bKss of heaven ; while they that have done 
ill, to that condition determined by the judg- 
ment. To Martha, Christ said: "He that 
liveth and believeth in me shall never die." 
In the case of the believer the only thing 
that dies in death is death itself. " The con- 
tinuity of the life that is lived in Christ is 
never suspended, but is borne through the 
momentary darkness of death, into the sphere 
of a vivid and fruitful human experience 
where all is perfect forever more." " There 



102 Beyond the Stars. 

Is therefore now no condemnation to them 
who are in Christ Jesns." These declarations 
of Scripture teach with a clearness that can- 
not be gainsaid that eternal life begins in the 
soul of the believer here, that death is only 
an incident in his experience which does not 
interrupt the continuity of his life and is the 
means of introducing him into a state of sin- 
less and perfect bliss. 

But there is another class of passages which 
seem to imply tliat believers will be arraigned 
before the judgment-seat of Christ. "It is 
appointed unto men once to die, and after 
death the judgment." " We must all be made 
manifest before the judgment-seat of Christ, 
that each may receive the things done in the 
body, according to what he hath done, whether 
it be good or bad." But what is the judg- 
ment to him who dies in the Lord ? Jesus, 
who pardoned all his sins the moment he be- 
lieved, and who is his best friend, is his judge. 
He appears at the judgment>seat as one whose 
acquittal has already been pronounced, clad 
in the perfect righteousness of Jesus. The 



The General Judgment 103 

judgment does not determine or change liis 
condition. The Eesnrrection, for him, is 
not a resurrection unto judgment, but a res- 
urrection unto greater fullness of life aikd 
bliss. 

We return to the question. What relation 
do the saints sustain to the final judgment % 
Are such men as Abraham, Moses, David, 
Daniel, Stephen, and Paul — men who have 
been thousands of years in heaven — to be put 
on trial on the great judgment day ? Is there 
not considerable confusion in the minds o.f 
many Christians in regard to the object 0/ 
the final judgment ? If those who believe in 
the Lord Jesus Christ are pardoned the mo- 
ment they believe, and their sins are cancelled 
and never rise against them to condemn them ; 
if those who die in the Lord pass at once into 
heaven, and enter upon a career of sinless 
bliss — countless multitudes of whom will have 
been thousands of years in heaven when the 
judgment day comes, and, consequently, their 
eternal destiny will have been fixed thousands 
of years before the judgment — what is tho 



104: Beyond the Stars. 

object of the final judgment ? Its object is 
to vindicate God's administration of tlie affairs 
of this world, and exhibit to the intelligent 
universe His manifold wisdom and goodness 
as revealed in the plan of salvation. It takes 
place at the end of the world, because God's 
plan will then be complete, and the results 
can be exhibited. " Then those parts of thb 
divine procedure which have been too deep 
and too high for the comprehension of the 
wisest and best men, and which have led 
wicked men to blaspheme the name of God, 
will shine forth to the admiring joy of saints 
and angels, and to the confusion of the 
ungodly. This is the view constantly set 
forth in the Scriptures. The apostle Paul 
teaches that the plan of salvation is developed 
Ho the intent that now unto principalities 
and powers in heavenly places might be 
known, by the church, the manifold wisdom 
of God, according to the eternal purpose 
which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord.^ 
But there are many things in this wonderful 
plan which the angels to whom the apostle 



The General Judgment. 105 

refers are profoundly mysterious, and which 
they cannot comprehend, and Hhe manifold 
wisdom ' of which they cannot see till it shall 
be completed. 'Which things,' sajs Peter, 
Uhe angels desire to look into.' Therefore 
the Psalmist, speaking of the general judg- 
ment, says : ' He shall call to the heavens from 
above, and to the earth, that He may judge 
His people : Gather my saints together unto 
me — those who have made a covenant with 
me by sacrifice. And the heavens shall de- 
clare His righteousness, for God is judge 
Himself.' He issues His snmmons to the in- 
habitants of heaven and earth to witness the 
solemn scene, that the heavens may declare 
His righteousness. Accordingly, we read that 
'when the Son of Man shall come in His 
glory,' the holy angels shall come with Him 
to witness the final adjudication. Paul tells 
us that He 'shall be revealed from heaven 
with His mighty angels, in flaming fire, tak- 
ing vengeance on them that know not God 
and obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus 
Christ,' and that 'He shall come to be glori- 



106 Beyond the Stars. 

fied in His saints, and to be admired in aU 
tliem that believe.' " * 

The judgment day is the day on which 
the saints shall stand before God, body 
and soul, sinless, glorified, and be openly ac- 
knowledged by the Lord Jesus Christ before 
the universe. The saints, instead of fearing 
the approach of the judgment day as a day 
whose decisions may unfavorably affect them, 
are taught in the Scriptures to look forward 
to it as their coronation day. Instead of be- 
ing judged, they will actually bear a part in the 
general judgment as the assessors of Christ. 
" Know ye not that the saints will judge the 
world ? " " Know ye not that we shall judge 
angels ? '' The scenes of that great day will 
be closed by the Judge and King saying to 
His redeemed ones: "Come, ye blessed of 
my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for 
yon from the foundation of the world." 



* '* Immortality of the Soul and Destiny of 
the Wicked,'* by Rev. N. L. Rice, D.D., page 163. 



XI. 
THE GRAND CONSUMMATION. 

While the judgment is in progress in the 
air, the earth is to pass through a metamor- 
phosis of fire which is to purge it of sin. 
The Psalmist says : " Of old hast Thou laid the 
foundation of the earth ; and the heavens are 
the work of Thy hands. They shall perish, 
bnt Thou shalt endure ; yea, all of them shall 
wax old like a garment; as a vesture shalt 
Thon chsi^e them and they shall be changed.'' 
" Lift up your eyes to the heavens," says Isaiah, 
" and look upon the earth beneath ; for the 
heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and 
the earth shall wax old like a garment.'' 
Again, " Behold, I create new heavens and a 
new earth ; and the former shall not be re- 
membered nor come into mind." " Heaven 
and earth," said Christ, " shall pass away.' 

(107) 



108 Beyond the Stars. 

Peter says, "The heavens and earth which 
are now aie kept in store reserved unto 
fire against the day of judgment and per- 
dition of ungodly men. The day of tlie 
Lord will come as a thief in the night; in 
which the heavens shall pass away with a great 
noise, and the elements shall melt with fer- 
vent heat ; the earth also, and the works that 
are therein, shall be burned up. Seeing then 
that all these things shall be dissolved, what 
manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy 
conversation and godliness, looking for and 
hasting unto the coming of the day of God, 
wherein the heavens being on fire shall be 
dissolved and the elements shall melt with fer 
v^ent heat ? " "I saw," says John, " a great 
white throne and Him that sat on it, from 
whose face the heavens fled away, and there 
was found no place for them. I saw a new 
heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven 
and the first earth were passed away; and 
there was no more sea." 

It would be vain to speculate as to the 
specific nature of tie unexplained changes 



The Grand Consummation. 109 

the earth and its atmospheric heavens — all 
that part of material creation affected by sin 
— are to undergo at the final judgment. 
But with our present knowledge of the con- 
stituent elements of earth, air, and water, it 
is 6asy to see how a change in the relation 
which these properties sustain to each other 
would wrap this terraqueous globe in a flame 
of fire that would cause it to melt with fer- 
vent heat. "The fire-element in nature is 
oxygen; this gas is the producer of fiame 
and combustion, and is the mightiest and 
most destructive of all the elements. Be- 
tween one-half and two-thirds of the crust 
of this globe and of the bodies of its inhabit- 
ants consist of oxygen. One-fifth of the 
volume of the whole atmosphere is composed 
of oxygen. No less than eight-ninths of all 
water is formed of the same gas. It makes 
up three-fourths of our own bodies, and no less 
than four-fifths of every plant, and at least 
one-half of the soHd rock. Let then this ele- 
ment but be released, let the mysterious 
aflSnities ihat now hold it in restraint but 



110 Beyond the Stars. 

cease, and the hardened rocks, or even the 
very waters of the ocean, would supply the 
fire and fervent heat that would consume 
the earth and the works that are therein.'^ ^ 

" It is more than probable that when the 
last catastrophe of our globe arrives, the oxy- 
gen and the nitrogen, or the two constituent 
principles of the atmosphere, will be sepa- 
rated by the interposition of Almighty Power. 
And the moment this separation takes place, 
the most dreadful explosions will resound 
throughout the whole expanse which sm* 
rounds the globe, which will stun the assem 
bled world and shake the earth to its foun 
dations. Eor if, in chemical experiments, 
conducted on a small scale, the separation of 
two gases, or their coming in contact with 
the principle of flame, is frequently accom- 
panied with a loud and destructive explosion, 
it is impossible to form an adequate idea of 
the loud and tremendous explosions which 
would ensue were the whole atmosphere at 

* "Religion and Chemistry," by Prof. J. P 
Cooke. 



The Grand Consummation, 111 

once dissolved and its elementary principles 
separated from each other and left to exert 
their native energies. A sound as if creation 
had burst asunder, and accompanied the next 
moment with a universal blaze extending 
over sea and land, would present a scene of 
sublimity and terror which would more than 
reahze all the descriptions given in Scripture 
of this solemn scene." ^ 

Out of the fires in which this globe will be 
^Trapped, a new heaven and a new earth will 
emerge, garnished with fairer scenes and more 
lovely landscapes than mortal eyes have ever 
gazed upon — an earth free from the taint or 
shadow of evil, wherein righteousness will 
dwell. There are expressions of Scripture 
which would seem to warrant the opinion 
held by some that this reconstructed and 
beautified earth wUl be one of the many man- 
sions in God's house which the glorified may 
visit, or in which they may dwell. 

After the resurrection has taken place, and 



* *^ Philosophy of a Future State," by Dr, 
Thomas Dick. 



112 Beyond the Stars. 

tlie judgment is over, and the new heavens 
and the new earth have appeared — after sin 
has been extirpated, and death destroyed, 
and Christ shall have gathered all His people 
into heaven — one thing more remains to be 
done. Then the Lord Jesus Christ will re- 
sign His mediatorial sceptre. " Then cometh 
the end, when He shall have delivered up the 
kingdom to God, even the Father ; when He 
shall have put down all rule, and all authority 
and power. For He must reign till He hath 
put all enemies under His feet. And when 
all things shall be subdued unto Him, then 
shall the Son also Himself be subject unto 
Him that put all things under Him, that God 
may be all in all." The end for which the 
mediatorial kingdom was established — ^name- 
ly, the extirpation of sin and the subjugation 
of every power hostile to God — ^having been 
accomphshed, Christ's mediatorial reign will 
cease, and God shall dwell and reign vis- 
ibly in the midst of His people. As we sweep 
out on the wings of a reverent imagination 
beyond the judgment, and contemplate r^ 



The Grand Oonsummaiion. 113 

deemed man, a glorified spirit in a glorified 
body — clothed with the pomp and power of 
immoi'tality, and fitted to work ont unwearied- 
ly the grand ministries of eternity — ^the Scrip- 
tm-es teach two things in regard to his eternal 
future : 

1. He shall be forever with the Lord. 
Eternal residence and fellowship with Jesus ! 
Eapturous thought! This implies absolute 
and everlasting exemption from sin, tempta- 
tion, sorrow and death, and perfect holiness 
and ineffable bhss. 

** The stars shall fade away, the sun himself 
Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years; 
But thou sbalt flourish in immortal youth, 
Unhurt amid the war of elements, 
The wreck of matter, and the crush of worlds." 

The full greatness of the joy and glory of 
heaven cannot be set forth in the dialect of 
earth. 

2. His knowledge of God, and of His worts 
and ways, will continue to increase through 
all eternity. " The future is to be a grand 
progress through the linked sequences of an 
ascending scale; a golden ladder which we 



114 Beyond the Stars. 

ehall climb, round after round, till we stand 
amid the awful and transfiguring splendors ol 
the eternal throne ; a constant advance towards 
the central Light ; a constant increase in life, 
power, wisdom, charity ; a beatific vision, which 
grows and spreads as we gaze upon it, and pours 
enlarging volume of energy and peace into our 
souls." ^ Is not this endless life of glory, in- 
creasing knowledge and power, beyond the 
stars, wliich it is possible to obtain through 
faith in Christ, worth all the self-denial and 
trials which it may now involve ? " The suf- 
ferings of this present time are not worthy to 
be compared with the glory which shall be re- 
vealed in us." Reader," give diligence to make 
your calling and election sure. Add to your 
faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge, and to 
knowledge temperance, and to temperance pa- 
tience, and to patience godliness, and to godli- 
ness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kind- 
ness charity. So an entrance shall be ministered 
unto you abundantly into the everlasting king 
iom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.'* 



*The Eesurrection," by Samuel Cox, 



WHOLESOME READING. 

HOW THEY KEPT THE FAITH. A Tale of the Huguenots 
of Languedoc. By Grace Raymond. i2mo, cloth. 
$1.50. 

"We have rarely met with an attempt to reproduce a past epoch, so 
true to historical fact and firm in its grasp of the inner springs of 
action, as this tale as to how the Huguenots kept the faith in the time 
of Louis XIV. and the Dragonnades. The story is wrought out skil- 
fully and naturally, the different characters stand out boldly on the can- 
vas, the adherents of the Reformed faith, from principles of honor 
and heredity, are well contrasted with those whose attachment rested 
on conviction and conscience, and it is made plain that only a living 
faith in Christ, a power stronger than man's, could hold one steadfast 
under the stress of such tests as believers in those days had to endure. 

" It must needs be that the story should abound in scenes which stir 
the blood with indignation and move the heart to pity, else it would not 
be true to history ; but needlessly harrowing details are avoided, there 
are rifts of light in the clouds, and the end is one of chastened joy and 
peace. There is about the whole book an air of reality — of truth to 
life — which raises it much above the average novel or historical study, 
and bespeaks literary skill of a very high order. The novel ought to at- 
tain a wide popularity and increase the growing reputation of the 
gifted author." 

LEAH OF JERUSALEM. A Story of the Time of Paul. By 
Edward Payson Berry. i2mo, 388 pages. 
Cloth. $1.25. 

A literary lady who read the manuscript says : " The style is strong; 
the story of intense interest ; the atmosphere of the period well caught. 
I lik«e the book better than any of the kind I have read except Ben-Hur." 

*' This is a very finely written story of the earliest days of Christi- 
anity, which is sure to give the reader a great deal of useful information 
concerning Jewish and Roman life and customs. It opens with the 
boyhood of St. Paul, which is described in a brief chapter. The second 
chapter introduces the heroine, Leah, at a date some twenty years later, 
who is cured of a fever by St. Stephen. The lirst martyrdom quickly 
follows, with Saul, now a young Jewish Rabbi, standing by. The life 
of the great Apostle is then mamly followed to its end in Rome, the sad 
experiences of Leah and her lover, who is St. Luke, being woven into 
the narrative. It is a sweet, pure, and strong story, which will do 
much in the way of quickening religious feeling in all who read it." 
— Providence Journal. 

AN OLD CHRONICLE OF LEIGHTOISI. By Sarah S. Hamer. 
1 2mo, cloth, illustrated. $1.50. 
** This is an interesting and well- written story of English life and 
character in the early part of the present century. The characters 
are well drawn and the incidents have about them all the flavor of the 
olden time. The writer has a pleasant, sprightly style which will at 
once win upon the reader, and there is not a dull page to be found be- 
tween the covers of her book. We commend it to our readers as a book 
above the average." — The Christian at Work, 



THE CHILD OF THE PRECINCT. A Story by Sarah 
DOUDNEY. With four illustrations, i2mo, cloth. 
$1.50. 

*' Here is a beautiful English story, the scene laid partly in the city 
and partly in the country. This ' Child of the Precinct ' is a sweet- 
faced orphan g-irl who, finding her way back, when days are dark, to 
her old friends and acquaintances is adopted into their circle and 
becomes a part of their life. How bright and winsome a part she 
plays is well told, and the sentiment that appears is of a pleasing and 
wholesome sort." — The Stafidard. 

'' The book is full of incident, is healthy and moral in tone, and 
depicts the trials of a young giil, first with an invahd mother, then an 
orphan. It shows her good judgment, and heroism, and womanly 
character. Altogether it is a veiy readable book, and one that will be 
an acceptable present." — Joui'ual aiid Messenger. 

GODIVA DURLEIGH. A Story by Sarah Doudney. 
With four illustrations. i2mo, cloth. $1.50. 
** A good, pure, bright, and well-written book by an English writer 
who is well known. Godiva Durleigh, the only daughter and sole com- 
panion of her father, a philanthropist of no little note, who spent his 
life and gave it for the rescue of several small children from their brutal 
father, and thereby he received his death-blow. Godiva, stunned by 
the loss of her father and companion, and alone in the world, save 
an uncle and three cousins, to whose care her father committed her. 
Sad and lonely were the days this lovely character spent in uncon- 
genial surroundings, stung by the taunts of her jealous cousins ; she 
was thrown upon her own resources, until an accident occurred to one 
of the cousins which nearly sapped her life ; then it was that Godiva 
became all in all to every member of the family. For years hei' 
lover's life and her own drifted apart, but after many vicissitudes kind 
fate brought them together. But the book will have to be read to find 
out her end and that of many other characters in this book." — Southern 
Churchman, 

THE ONLY WAY OUT, By Leander S. Keyser. i6mo, 
cloth. $ f .00. 
The purpose of the author is to present a faithful portrait of the 
bonest doubter ; to describe his experiences, perplexities, and mental 
phases in general, and to point out the only way of escape from doubt. 
He believes that there are many earnest and intelligent young men and 
women in our colleges and elsewhere who honestly doubt the Divine 
authority of the Bible, and who would gladly welcome the truth if they 
were persuaded that it is to be found.- Such persons will find many 
of their perplexities depicted in the story, while their objections are 
dealt with as fairly and thoroughly as possible. Other sceptics, not 
so sincere, may yet be benefited if the truth is presented to them in the 
proper manner. There is more fact than fiction in the spiritual ex- 
periences delineated; for the author has only described a land through 
which he himself has travelled, and is, therefore, familiar with the 
trials of the journey. The morally depleting influence of doubt, the in- 
adequacy of modern materialism to satisfy the higher rational needs 
of the soul, and the gradual descent of the sceptic into pessimism and 
despair, are also described. 



STUBBLE OR WHEAT ? A Story of more Lives than One. 
By S. Bayard Dod. i6mo, cloth, $1.00 ; paper, 
25 cents. 

A dramatic and original story, the purpose of which is to face the 
tide of pessimism that is sweeping through our literature, and ask men 
to listen to both sides of the question. It is a domestic story, showing 
the oirtcome of a life modelled on the pessimistic philosophy; and how, 
under ordinary circumstance?, an earnest nature will be led who adop j 
this as the guiding influence of his life ; the inevitable trend of its 
teachings. The principal character is a man who deliberately anl 
carefully allows his better hfe to be destroyed by a corroding disbelief 
in all things good, true, and beautiful, and the story of whose career 
is carried on through school and college and after graduation. In 
contrast are other lives in the same circumstances grandly overcoming 
difficulties, and growing stronger and gladder. The characters are 
finely differentiated, and each one bears the stamp of a distinct per- 
sonality. The exhibition of the pessimist's theory, contrasted with that 
of a sound Christian philosophy, suggests the answer to the question 
of the title : Which makes of life a field of barren stubble, and which a 
harvest of ripened grain ? 



STORIES BY SOPHY WINTHROP WEITZEL 

Faith and Patience ; or, The Harrington Girls. i6mo, 
cloth. Illustrated. $1.00. 

'• The/^^'z/^, graceful proportions, and fair, chaste apparel of this 
little book, will delight a critical eye. It appears outwardly to be de- 
signed especially to carry captive the hearts of juvenile readers ; but 
inwardly it is adapted to please every cultivated mind. The story is not 
pretentious either m subject or dimensions, but it is very neatly told, 
and in both matter and manner will give abundant satisfaction." — 
New York Tribiiiie. 

Renee of France, Duchess of Ferrara. i2mo, cloth $ 1 .00. 

*' The terrible trials to which devout souls were subjected in attempt- 
ing to escape from the toils of the mother-church in the first century 
of the Lutheran Reformation, and especially of one born in a royal 
family, as was the Princess Renee, the daughter of Louis XII., are 
vividly presented in this volume." — Chi'tstian Weekly, 

"An appreciative woman's efforts to do justice to another woman, 
whose modest post in history has not attracted the attention her char- 
acter merits." — Troy Times, 

Sister and Saint. A Sketch of the Life of Jacqueline 
Pascal. i2mo, cloth. $1.09. 

" There is an indescribable charm in each of the several characters 
here pictured, and the story as a whole will come like a refreshing in- 
fluence into the hot and hurried life of this nineteenth century. It 
opens up a field new to most readers, and everybody will find it pleas- 
ant. " — CfiJtrchman. 

" The book, besides being a charming story, is a valuable review of 
the religious life of the period."— C^^r?^/?^?? Union, 



STORIES BY MARGARET M. ROBERTSON. 

By a Way She Knew Not. The Story of Allison Bain. 
i2mo, cloth. $1.59. 

A pleasing story of Scotch life among humble people, somewhat 
unusual in outline, and containing strongly drawn representations of 
character. The descriptions of the simple, honest life in the little town 
of Nethermuir make^^/^r^ pictures of uncommon merit, and one is 
not likely to straightway forget the household at the manse, or the 
school-mistress and her pupils. A religious tone which pervades the 
book adds dignity to the story, while it in no way weakens the perfect 
art of the whole. 

Eunice. A domestic Story of New England Life. With 
12 illustrations. i2mo. $1.50. 

A domestic story of New England persons and life, which sets 
forth vividly some of the trials which, although they occur to people 
everywhere, yet will be recognized by all New-Englanders as in a real 
sense characteristic of New England. The problems to be faced are 
outlined strongly, the religious spirit of the book is good, and is united 
with a story of real power. 

Janet's Love and Service. i2mo, cloth. $1.50. 

*' It is rarely that we read a story which gives us so much satisfaction 
and so little cause of complaint. It is the story of just such a life as has 
occurred again and again in the past, and will occur again and again in 
the future. In form and style and method of treatment the volume is as 

simple as it is select It is rather genial than witty or humorous, 

and it will be a satisfaction to know that there is a public who prefer 
this romance of real life to that of the cheap fire and sheet-iron thunder 
to be found in many modem novels." — Harper^ s Magazine, 



THE STARLING. A Scotch Story. By Norman Macleod. 
Paper, 30 cents. 

** A Scottish tale rich in humor, of absorbing interest, sufficiently 
instructive, and altogether edifying. Dr. Macleod is more apt in de- 
lineation oi Scottish character than George Mac Donald, and he never 
proses ; there is nothing the reader wants to skip." — The Occide7it. 

THE OLD LIEUTENANT ANO HIS SON. By Norman 
Macleod. Paper, 30 cents. 

"A charming story, told in the author's most winning way. Dr. 
Macleod needs no introduction to the reader." 

Published by A. D. F. RANDOLPH CO., 

NEW YORK. 

:!:** Bent bg mail, post-paid, on receipt of price. 



THE WORKS OF ELIZABETH PRENTISS. 

STEPPING HEAVENWARD. With a brief Sketch of the 
Author. Cloth, 12nio, 400 pages. $1.00, net, postpaid. 

Same. New cheap edition. Cloth, 16mo, 8 illustrations, 
oroamental ink stamping. 50 cents, postpaid. 

Same. Paper, 8vo, 8 illustrations. 25 cents, postpaid. 

It is a story of the Life of Faith, with the charm of naturalness and human 
sympathy. This makes it acceptable as well as pure, strong and helpful,— 
xV. Y. Ohsermr. 

PEMACIUID. A Story of Old Times in New England. Cloth, 
12mo, 370 pages. $1.00, net, postpaid. 

We regard it as one of her best books.— T'-^e Evangelist. 

THE HOME AT GREYLOCK. Cloth, 12mo, 338 pages. 
$1.00, net, postpaid. 

A story which embodies the results of thirty years of experience and reflec- 
tion. Religion and love alike are made the foundation of a true home. 

As wholesome as it is entertaining, and conveys many instructive lessons in 
its graceful and flowing narrative. — Christian Intelligencer. 

URBANE AND HIS FRIENDS. Cloth, 12mo, 387 pages. 
Enlarged edition. $1.00, net, postpaid. 

Full of kindly and genial counsel, marked by great tenderness and simplicity 
of spirit, and very earnest and helpful.— ^05to?z Journal. 

AUNT JANE'S HERO. Cloth, 12mo, 300 pages. $1.00, 
net, postpaid. 

Aunt Jane's Hero is so like people we meet that we are anxious to have 
them read the book, in order to profit by its teachings. We like it and believe 
others v/ill. — T/ze Advance. 

GOLDEN HOURS. Hymns and Songs of the Christian Life. 
Blue cloth, 16mo, silver edges and stamping. 75 cents, 
postpaid. 

We do not think there is a poem in this book which it will not do one good 
to read, while there are many which will quicken the aspirations and desires. — 

AVIS BENSON; OR, MINE AND THINE, With other 
Sketches. Cloth, 12mo, 275 pages. $1.00, postpaid. 

Incidents of common life wrought up into a series of interestms: sketches 
bearing the seal of good taste, inventive fancy, and rare practical wisdom. — 
N. Y. 'Tribune. 

HOW SORROW WAS CHANGED INTO SYMPATHY. 

Words of Cheer for Mothers bereft of Little Children. 
Cloth, 16mo. $1.00, postpaid. 

For those who need such consolation we can imagine that this volume would 
bring much comfort. Its pages were for the most part written without a 
thought of the public eye. They read like the confidential talk between dear 

friends Had we occasion to send such a volume to a friend, we have 

rarely met one which would answer the end so thoroughly. — Churchman. 

GRISELDA. A Dramatic Poem in Five Acts. Translated 
from the German of Friedrich Holme. Cloth, 12mo. 
$1,50, postpaid. 

It is as picturesque as the best of Tennyson's Idyls, and it is as musical, 
though the music is rougher, and less perfect in its cadence.— 2%e Christian 
Intelligencer. 



THE WORKS OF ELIZABETH PRENTISS. 

FRED AND MARIA AND ME. Cloth, 16mo. $1.00, 
postpaid. 

THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF ELIZABETH PREN- 
TISS. Cloth, 12mo. $1.50, net, postpaid. 

BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE. 

THE FLOWER OF THE FAMILY. A Book for Girls. 
Cloth, 16mo, 400 pages. $1.00, net, postpaid. 

It aims to exact trivial home duty by showing how such duty performed in 
the fear of God and the love of Christ may lead upward and onward, through 
present self-denial, to the highest usefulness, peace, and joy. 

THE PERCYSo Cloth, 16mo, 850 pages. $1,00, postpaid. 

A picture of a genial, happy, Christian home ; saintly, without being sancti- 
monious ; heavenly, without asceticism or formality; one too which, when it 
sorrows, " is always rejoicing." 

ONLY A DANDELION, and Other Stories. Cloth, 16mo, 
300 pages. $1.00, postpaid. 

A collection of stories in prose and verse that cannot fail to interest older 
readers as well as the class for whom they were specially prepared. 

NIDWORTH AND HIS THREE MAGIC WANDS. 

Cloth, 16mo, 280 pages. $1.00, postpaid. 

There is just enough of the fairy element in it to keep the children's interest 
perpetually awake, and so much of high moral teaching that the main lesson 
cannot well be mi^^Q^.— Mourning Star. 

THE STORY LIZZIE TOLD. Cloth, 16mo, 48 pages. 

Young and old alike will read this touching story of a little English cripple- 
girl and drop a tear upon the page as they read. It was written after reading 
the accounts of the society for the "Promotion of Window-Gardening among 
the Poor," and is a picture of suffering and triumph that can never be 
forgotten. 

THE SIX LITTLE PRINCESSES, and What They Turned 
Into. Cloth, 16mo. 

No one of Mrs. Prentiss' lesser works betrays a keener insight into character 
or a finer touch than this. Its aim is to illustrate the truth that all girls are 
endowed with their own individual talents, and to enforce the twofold lesson 
that the diligent use of these talents on the one hand can furnish innocent 
pleasures beyond the reach of any outward position however brilliant, and on 
the other is the best preparation for the day of adversity. 

The above two volumes, bound together in cloth, 75 
cents. 

THE LITTLE PREACHER. Cloth, 16mo, 223 pages. 
11.00. 

A cbarming, lovhig, thoughful book in its style and in its lessons. We 
commend it gladly to old as well as to young readers. It is rich in lessons of 
Divine wisdom as well as deeply interesting. 

GENTLEMAN JIM. Cloth, 24mo, 100 pages. 60 cents. 

It is a tale of humble life, relating the experiences of a working miner. He 
was a true hero in his way, leading a life of self-sacrifice. The story is well 
told, full of incident, and expressing more in its brief compass than is to be 
found in writings of far greater pretension. — N. Y. Trilmne. 

THE OLD BROWN PITCHER. A Temperance Tale. 
Cloth, 16mo. 11.00. 



THE WORKS OF ELIZABETH PRENTISS. 

BOOKS FOR YOUNG OHILDRETsT 

HENRY AND BESSIE, AND WHAT THEY DID IN 
THE COUNTRY. Cloth, 16mo, 200 pages, with illustra^ 
tions. 75 cents. Adapted to children from seven to ten 
years of age. 
A charming story of a summer spent in the country by a family of city chil- 
dren. The new scenes and the change in the daily life are portrayed with un- 
usual naturahiess and simplicity. We know of no more beautiful book for the 
class of children for w^hom it was prepared. 

PETERCHEN AND GRETCHEN ; OR, TALES FROM 

EARLY CHILDHOOD. Translated from the German. 

Cloth, 16mo, 225 pages, with illustrations. 75 cents. 

Adapted to children from four to eight years of age. 

One of the simplest and most pleasing books for young children with which 

we are acquainted. It has all the quaintness and homeness, if we may use 

such a word, that belongs to the German child's book. 

LITTLE THREADS; OR, TANGLED THREAD, SIL- 
VER THREAD, AND GOLDEN THREAD. Cloth, 
16mo, 200 pages, with two illustrations. 75 cents. Adapted 
to children from seven to ten years of age. 
There are few children who would not be interested in this story, while it 

is full of wise thought and suggestion for parents in matters pertaining to the 

training of their little ones. 

LITTLE LOU S SAYINGS AND DOINGS. Large square 
12mo, boards, 287 pages. $1.00. The Story of a Boy. 
Adapted to readers from five to seven years of age. 
It is very bright and entertaining and will afford genuine delight to the boys 

and g\v\^.— The Congregationalist. 

LITTLE SUSTS SIX TEACHERS. Cloth, square 16mo, 
large type, illustrated. $1.00. 
Same. In two volumes, with new illustrations. Per 
vol., 50 cents. 

LITTLE SUSY'S SIX BIRTHDAYS. Cloth, square 16mo, 
large type, illustrated. $1.00. 
Same. In two volumes, with new illustrations. Per 
vol., 50 cents. 

LITTLE SUSY'S LITTLE SERVANTS. Cloth, square 
16mo, large type, illustrated. $1.00. 
Same. In two volumes, with new illustrations. Per 
vol., 50 cents. 
Adapted for children from four to six years of age. 

There is nothing in the w^ay of story books for young children that wiil 
compare with the " Susy Books." 

LITTLE SUSY'S SIX TEACHERS, SIX BIRTHDAYS, 
and SIX SERVANTS in one volume. N"ew electrotype 
edition, with twelve new illustrations and ornamental 
stamp, square 8vo, cloth. $2.00. 
The above volumes may also be had by the set of three vols, or six wis. at 
$3.00. 
Sold by booksellers or sent by mail on receipt of price. 

A. D. F. RANDOLPH CO., 

Fifth Avenue, New York, 



